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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25815592">The Backup Plan</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/TrickySleeves/pseuds/TrickySleeves'>TrickySleeves</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>(marked and skippable), Alternate Universe, Ensemble Cast, F/M, Heist, M for: gambling crime alcohol and sex, References to Drugs, Sexual Content, blue lions caper crew, contentious relationship, mild violence, partners in crime to lovers, whimsical action &amp; romance</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-08-10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-04-12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 12:16:51</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>73,717</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25815592</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/TrickySleeves/pseuds/TrickySleeves</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>For every plan there are a hundred backup plans. Take it from the daughter of a legendary thief, the simpler the backup plan is, the better off you’ll be. Pare your heist down with Occam’s razor, or you might just find yourself carving tally marks into a jail cell to track the days.</em>
</p><p>The deck is stacked, and Byleth's about to go all in. This heist has been in the books for a year now. Stealing the legendary Chalice of Beginnings won't be easy, but if they pull it off, it would set the crew up for life—no more petty crimes and no more half-assed grifts.</p><p>It's the perfect strategy. Except... the plan hinges on getting her ex-fiance—the best burglar in Fodlan—back on her side. And you know Felix, he can be a little stubborn.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Felix Hugo Fraldarius/My Unit | Byleth</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>108</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>90</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Reunion at Dawn</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Byleth recruits Felix for a big heist.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Felix used to wonder if anyone was really born in Enbarr. Or had they all crawled there hand over knee, ex-pats looking for a home, just like him? After a few years of living in the red-lit city, though, he knew how to spot the natives. It was a matter of professional courtesy; he never picked the pocket of a local.</p>
<p>Beneath a veneer of gold-dust, Enbarr natives were scrappy and warlike. Even the prettiest rose among the jazz singers carried a pistol and snorted her coke off a sword-edge. That local brass—he could taste its metal in the air.</p>
<p>The casinos of Enbarr were an ecosystem where the shadows fed on everything that slinks—barebacked but never exposed—beneath the neon lights. Leicestrians threw down the cash they harvested from overseas trade. Faerghans hunched on barstools to drink the daylight away. Seiros businessmen poached the best lays from a locale where plastic surgery was a standard procedure.</p>
<p>Standing in the middle of the casino floor, Felix watched a pair of Seiros men in tan suits walk by. Colors dulled where they went. Even the jazz playing from overhead speakers quieted as they passed.</p>
<p>In their wake, Felix watched a woman shift from a roulette wheel to a blackjack table near him. Her green hair clashed against the red carpets. That wasn’t a good sign either.</p>
<p>News blared from one of the casino bar units:</p>
<p>Tightening security around Garreg Mach; increased tariffs between Faerghus and Adrestia; Leicester Alliance obscuring the numbers on its oil holdings. <em>‘MORE ART CRIME?’</em> ran scrolling text across the bottom of the screen: <em>‘Expert appraiser Ignatz Victor has discovered a counterfeit among the Royal Museum of Fhirdiad’s Rembrandt collection.’</em></p>
<p>Felix already knew about that last one. It was why he was currently stalking the art critic through every casino in Enbarr.</p>
<p>He was still standing by the blackjack table when someone wearing too much gold leaned over the railing of a balcony above. Messy bangs framed a tan face known for being as clever as it was attractive with doe eyes and a perfectly maintained beard along the jawline. Claude winked from the balcony and sauntered off.</p>
<p>Fuck. He’d been made, and by the boss of his mark, no less.</p>
<p>From the corner of his eye, he saw that same green hair flash at the blackjack table. The woman was also looking up at the balcony Claude had just vacated.</p>
<p>Double-fuck. That just figures—blackjack was the natural habitat of manipulative, card-counting thieves.</p>
<p>She looked straight at him. Green hair, green eyes, poison half-smile. Shit.</p>
<p>It was barely a second before she was on him.</p>
<p>“Welcome me to Enbarr, Fraldarius?”</p>
<p>Her voice whispered among the electronic siren-calls of slot machines. Even after five years and hundreds of sweaty fantasies, which ranged between tying her up to kill her slowly and chaining her down to fuck her gently, there was no mistaking it.</p>
<p>Nor was there any mistaking the flat steel of a knife at Felix’s neck making the little hairs stand up like they wanted to be shaved, and god-fucking-damn-it he was a little aroused.</p>
<p>He leaned into the knife and braced himself to feel it cut into his skin. His threat worked, however, and her hand slipped away from his neck. She had never intended to cut him, but it didn’t stop her from being too fast for her own good. In a second, she had stepped around him from behind. Her fist pulled the lapel of his teal jacket.</p>
<p>“Fancy meeting you here.” A vein pulsed serpentine through his neck.</p>
<p>“A welcome surprise?” Out of old habit, he scanned the corners of her mouth for the secret smiles she tucked away.</p>
<p>“This time, no.”</p>
<p>Byleth’s perfume smelled like leather, spice, and tobacco and she had slinked her perfectly molded body into a black cocktail dress with off-the-shoulder straps. Don’t look down, he told himself, knowing that he was standing on a precipice over the world’s most deadly cleavage. He watched her slip the knife back into the green bun bound on her head by pearl-edged pins.</p>
<p>“How long have you been watching me?”</p>
<p>“A few days. What are you doing tailing Ignatz Victor around this sin-hole? It’s a waste of your talents.” He jerked his head back, as she tucked some inky hair behind his ear. “It’s been nice, though. You look so good in your new get-up—this Adrestian style. They use a lot of metals, don’t they? Never thought I’d see you wearing golden accents.” She said it almost pensively and ran a finger down the brassy buttons of his jacket.</p>
<p>When he didn’t say anything, she grabbed both lapels and tugged the jacket to rest it back in place, smoothed of all wrinkles. He thought about giving her a big ole kiss with his fist. “Forgive me for being so <em>familiar</em> when I haven’t seen you since...”</p>
<p>“Five years ago. You fucked me, said you loved me, and ran out with the papyrus scroll intended to fund our honeymoon.” He grabbed her wrists to push her hands away and dropped them in the air. “Fond memories. Do me a favor and go away.”</p>
<p>Instead, the bitch leaned in, her lips centimeters from his. He prepared to headbutt her.</p>
<p>“I can make it up to you. I have a much better job for you than tailing the Confidence Man and his Art Critic—”</p>
<p>Felix’s mind zip-lined between the self-loathing intrigue that made his eyes flick away from her and the absolute disgust that made him squint right into her eyes.</p>
<p>“You saw him too?”</p>
<p>“Von Riegan? Hard to miss him in that garish yellow suit. I swear, that man will be buried in gold.”</p>
<p>“And you? Buried beside him?” He watched Byleth savor his jealousy. She bit her lower lip to keep from smiling. Goddess, he hated her.</p>
<p>“Not in this lifetime.” Truth, he guessed. She looked away and stepped back from him. “<em>You</em> could bury me in teal, though.” Too coy, a lie. “I have an opportunity for you, a big one. All you have to do is get me out of here.” Most likely a truth. If Byleth was good at nothing else, she could line your pockets with cash.</p>
<p>Felix’s eyes flicked around the casino behind her. “You seem to be getting around fine.”</p>
<p>“I need out of Adrestia.”</p>
<p>“So I’m your getaway driver now? Who are you running from? Some sucker you abandoned in a hotel room? Did you rob him of everything but your declarations of undying love?”</p>
<p>Her eyes feasted on his bitterness. Her hands began drifting toward him again. “No, that gambit was just for you. Listen, I’m planning something and I swear the payoff will be big. And, I’ll let you keep it this time.”</p>
<p>Before she could take more than a step backward, he leaned in and gripped her shoulder. His claw was tight enough for her to feel his callouses as his nails left half-moon fingernail impressions in her skin. She didn’t even flinch. “Why me, <em>professor</em>?”</p>
<p>Her eyes flickered as she noticed the nickname. So he had been keeping tabs on her too.</p>
<p>“You’re the best burglar in the game.” Her voice was full of winter and too many memories. But if skill was what she needed, skill was the only thing he was selling those days.</p>
<p>“Fine, I’ll lend a hand. We’ll catch up later.” He loosened his hand on her shoulder and pretended to direct her through the busy casino.</p>
<p>“Follow my lead and stay close.” She hissed up at him before eyeing some unattended chips on a poker table, and even better, a whole wallet. “If only this dress had pockets.”</p>
<p>“I’m not stealing for you. This place is air-tight with cameras.” Felix nodded curtly to a man in Faerghan blue who was checking Byleth out, clearly assuming she was an escort from the distanced way Felix led her around.</p>
<p>“I have them on a loop and my girl’s watching out for us.”</p>
<p>“What? Who hacked them?” Felix asked. He hoped she could feel his annoyed glare through the back of her head.</p>
<p>Byleth directed them to the attached shopping mall. “Annie D., of course.” A wired security guard passed close, looking them up and down. On cue, Byleth leaned languidly into Felix’s stiff body, pretending to have drunk too many free rum-and-cokes.</p>
<p>“Fuck, Byleth, are we in the middle of a job right now?” </p>
<p>“What did you expect, that I was just here to pick you up?” She pulled him toward a cheap tourist store. “Cover my back.” She greeted a woman with fuchsia hair whose name tag said, Anna. “Hello, I need to buy a parasol. It’s so bright out there, and I want to sit by the pools—but my <em>complexion</em>, you know?”</p>
<p>Felix rolled his eyes. <em>Complexion</em> was obviously the code word. Five years and Byleth’s tactics hadn’t changed.</p>
<p>“I have just the one for you,” the woman said enthusiastically. Instead of reaching into the bin with the rest of the parasols, though, she pulled one from beneath the counter. Byleth paid for it and walked her sprezzatura-feet back to Felix at the storefront.</p>
<p>“Let’s go,” she hissed. “Annie’s out at the 9th street entrance.” As they walked from the mall, heels clicking on polished tiles to the lazy tones of jazz muzak, Byleth held the parasol as nonchalantly as she could. Something about it, though, was burning up in her hands.</p>
<p>Mistaking his glares for something more personal, she said, “Would it help if I said that there’s a reason I did what I did?”</p>
<p>A guard was tapping his hand against his side and watching Byleth through reflections.</p>
<p>“Save it,” Felix said. He rubbed his hand over his hair. “That guard has you spotted.”</p>
<p>“Shit, I knew I’d been rumbled. This is Claude’s doing. He must know we’re here.” Her tone remained level as if she was simply expressing the desire to eat a croissant.</p>
<p>“We? I’ve been here for years and no one’s cared.”</p>
<p>She looked at him, words forming on her tongue, mouth about to open, then her face closed on it: “Right.”</p>
<p>“Don’t you have a backup plan?”</p>
<p>“I always have a backup plan,” she echoed fiercely. It might have been the first real emotion she had shown. “Go catch Annie’s get-away car. She knows how to meet me.”</p>
<p>“And if I choose to just cut out of here.”</p>
<p>The security agent shifted to see her better through another storefront reflection. She shrugged while laughing loudly. It was all a display, and when she spoke her tone was calm again. “I’m counting on your curiosity, but if you don’t show up in the getaway car, I’ll have to track down another burglar. Maybe Leclerc, he’s been making a name for himself.”</p>
<p>Felix scoffed. “You know, if you make it out of this, I’m not kissing you.”</p>
<p>“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”</p>
<p>“You know how you get after pulling off a job.”</p>
<p>— —</p>
<p>
  <em>Five years ago, Byleth had the papyrus scroll strapped to her back like the world’s most potent aphrodisiac. It would pay for their honeymoon on the canals of Derdriu. It would buy them property. They were leaving behind this life of crime.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>The scroll-case bounced, as she pushed Felix into the elevator. He was so fucking beautiful as he stumbled backward to stand in his sexiest contrapposto. She straddled his leg, and he put both hands under her ass pulling her closer, while she dropped her fingers to press between his legs.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>Her other hand was tugging, pulling, trying to undo his belt. “Can you wait until we’re in the room before undressing me?” More a tease than a plea, and more flattered than anything. But Byleth’s mouth was occupied with attempting to suck his soul out through his throat, so it was up to her hands to respond, as they freed his belt and slipped inside.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>— —</em>
</p>
<p>As the memory dissipated, Byleth’s smile was real, not her grifter’s purring and grinning. It reshaped her face into those same beautiful features that had once tugged him under the guillotine of love.</p>
<p>Felix felt a phantom touch at the back of his neck. He shivered and shook it off like a cat. Oh how he hated her.</p>
<p>“No kissing—now we know our boundaries. Get move on, that guard’s more suspicious every moment.”</p>
<p>She was right. The security guard was shifting from one foot to the other, and his eyes were drawing Byleth’s outline in the shopfront reflection. He was about to make a move. Byleth stepped away from Felix and staged a show for the security guard by blowing him a kiss with all her fake smiles. Then she walked away, parasol spinning in front of her like a baton.</p>
<p>As the security guard went after her, Felix grimaced and ducked away toward the 9th street entrance, his mind churning up reasons why Claude might call security down on Byleth and not himself.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>— — —</p>
<p> </p>
<p>For every plan, there are a hundred backup plans. Each strategist will have their own style. Some will be flamboyant (fireworks and hang gliders), others will depend on distraction, dense shadow, and a knife in the dark.</p>
<p>Take it from the daughter of a Legendary Thief, the simpler the backup plan is, the better off you’ll be. Pare your heist down with Occam’s razor, or you might just find yourself carving tally marks into the wall of a jail cell to keep track of the days.</p>
<p>On the way toward the pool, Byleth pulled out a tiny burner phone and keyed in Annie’s number. She waited to hear the 90’s hip-hop beats bouncing in the background before starting in, “Annie, I’ve been rumbled. Felix is headed your way. Pick him up and meet me at the backup location.”</p>
<p>“I’m your girl,” came Annie’s chipper voice.</p>
<p>Byleth trashed the phone and crossed the mall, riding the escalators toward the poolside. She insinuated herself into a group of women wearing thin bathing wraps.</p>
<p>Your backup plan revs up when the main exit strategy is compromised. Good plans detour through a safe zone that allows you to spot the pursuers from the civilians.</p>
<p>A poolside detour is excellent for this. It takes some truly improbable skill to conceal a firearm in a bikini or pair of trunks. That means anyone who’s not practically naked could be packing heat, and you can ignore the rest.</p>
<p>Adrestia’s plastic surgery specialization kept a constant crowd around the pools. People leered; people drank; tits everywhere. It took a lot to impress Byleth, whom providence had blessed with her own set of jaw-dropping knockers. The thing was, if you found a really good pair in a bikini and slipped behind them, you’re almost sure to lose the aggro of most security guards. Distraction at its finest.</p>
<p>So that’s what Byleth did.</p>
<p>Satisfied that she lost the guard tailing her, Byleth opened and twirled the parasol. The cheap lace speckled spots of sunlight around her feet. Each dapple was a whimsical consolation for seeing Felix again. What had she expected, that he would hug her? Lift her up and spin her around—a long-lost treasure plundered from the vaults of the past?</p>
<p>She spun the dapples of the parasol counter-clockwise. They whirred by her feet. What she wouldn’t give to turn back time. Haha, what a joke. Everyone knows time travel is bullshit. But it sure helped to take her mind off things.</p>
<p>Up to the hot tub area and down the steps that led to the other side of the complex. She backtracked through the casino, past the hotel lobby, and through the service door. Byleth banked on looking like a dour cocktail waitress, as she walked into the kitchen and beelined for a back exit that led—everything according to plan—to the valet entrance on tenth street. Annie D.’S getaway car was waiting for her.</p>
<p>“Back seat, back seat,” Annie sang along to her beats as Byleth opened the door. The front passenger seat was occupied by a chunky laptop computer and a dozen gadgets for creating Wifi hotspots, a massive DSLR, recording and voice muffling equipment, and other techie things Byleth couldn’t identify.</p>
<p>Relief. There was another backseat passenger: a surly, long-haired thief. She dropped into the low seat, one of her burdens gone. Sure he looked huffy, pissed, maybe even slightly glad to see her? No, not in the least.</p>
<p>He shifted his eyes toward her and away again. Then, he glared at the bass speaker busting vibrations into their leather seats.</p>
<p>“Buckle up, By, I’m pulling out!” Annie tapped the car’s ceiling for good luck. Byleth suppressed a smile. Felix looked annoyed.</p>
<p>“Annie, can you turn that down!”</p>
<p>“Sure sure.” The base speaker chilled its rumble.</p>
<p>Byleth peeked furtive looks Felix’s way. His hair was longer than hers and tied into a decadent Adrestian-styled pony-tail. Part of it was braided over and tied with golden pins and clips.</p>
<p>The pangs of missing his man-bun were quickly assuaged once she began to imagine taking the pins out one by one. She imagined teasing his skin with their pointed ends. And the hair would feel so soft coming down around her face, like feathers. His skin had a little color from the hot Adrestian sun, which only made his amber eyes blaze hotter and—</p>
<p>“What?” Voice harsh, jaw clenched to fracture teeth.</p>
<p>“You really went local, huh.” Felix shrugged and turned his head to look out the car window. “So, you decided to come with us?”</p>
<p>“I expect this to save me from boredom,” he told the window. “Don’t make me regret it.”</p>
<p>“I promise it will be worth your while.”</p>
<p>The cane crook of the parasol was an easy twist-off. Byleth sank low in the seat and set the crook aside as she banged the hollow tube against her hand, the top of the parasol hitting awkwardly against the roof of the car.</p>
<p>“Did you get it?” Annette asked, glancing back as the car took a swerve toward the curb.</p>
<p>“Eyes on the road,” Felix growled.</p>
<p>“Just like old times, huh Felix?” Annette giggled. The car took a sharp swerve to the right.</p>
<p>A roll of thick handmade paper fell into Byleth’s hand, “There’s something in here alright.” She pinched it and pulled.</p>
<p>“Shouldn’t you be wearing gloves?” Felix looked over.</p>
<p>“Ever the stickler,” she disparaged him, as she unfurled the paper in her hands. Felix opened his mouth to retort but all that came out was <em>errrhm-tch</em>.</p>
<p>The mark was exactly as described, a page from the manuscript of a 15th-century saint’s lives on the deeds of Saint Chicol. The page was well-preserved enough for the red gouache and gold-leaf to still shine through the centuries.</p>
<p>Felix leaned his head in to look at it. His expert attention drawing to the most impressive element, the large illuminated letter “C” surrounding a miniature portrait of the Saint Chicol holding a tall winged spear.</p>
<p>“Is that a forgery?” Felix asked, falling back into his side of the car.</p>
<p>“It better not be. Annie, do you have that portfolio? I need to flatten this out.”</p>
<p>“It’s here,” Felix grabbed the portfolio from beside his feet and handed it over.</p>
<p>Byleth flattened the manuscript page and snapped it shut. “I need you to stay with us at least into Faerghus.”</p>
<p>“Why?”</p>
<p>“Let’s just say my generous benefactor is more interested in you than me.”</p>
<p>“Fuck me,” She side-eyed him: <em>gladly</em>. “You mean you have the Boar as your backer? What, you’re going to hand me over to him?”</p>
<p>“He’s not taking you into custody, Felix. It was part of our negotiation that I bring you back into Faerghus. Once we cross the border, you can leave for all I care.”</p>
<p>Quiet filled the car, interrupted only by trap beats and Annie’s jittery swerving.</p>
<p>“That’s why you came to find me after five years? To turn me over to my dad’s old employer?”</p>
<p>“No,” Byleth said quietly. “It’s not like that.”</p>
<p>“Calm down, Felix,” Annette called back. “We want you to join the crew again. Byleth has a big job planned!”</p>
<p>“You know why I came to find you.” She didn’t mean for it to come out at a whisper.</p>
<p>“Because I’m the best.”</p>
<p>“Exactly.” The car pulled into the lot of a hotel far off the strip, and Byleth held out a cash card between her fingers. “Take this and get yourself a room. Meet us in 426.”</p>
<p>“And if I don’t?” he asked, long legs already out the car door.</p>
<p>“The show goes on without you.” Byleth pretended to focus on the manuscript page as Felix walked away.</p>
<p>“Professor!” Annette turned around from the front seat to meet Byleth’s eyes. “I think he’ll show.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>— — —</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Before knocking on door 426, Felix put his ear to it. His eyes drifted downward to fraying carpet patterned in red circles.</p>
<p>Byleth always stayed in the cheaper hotels off the strip. Not because she couldn’t afford the glitz’n’glam of the von Hevring building with its giant lily-pad pools or the Aegir tower, known for its world-class tea room. It’s that, once you got down to brass tacks, each of those places was owned by Edelgard von Hresvelg, and Byleth wouldn’t stay anywhere that von Hresvelg owned.</p>
<p>She had once joked that if she was lucky enough to wake up in one of Edelgard’s hotels without her throat slit, she certainly wouldn’t be leaving through the front door without handcuffs. Besides, it was easier to buy off the staff in the cheaper hotels.</p>
<p>He could hear her voice through the door: “Claude rumbled me. I’m sure that didn’t help… So he’s jumpy and conflicted, but I think he’s ultimately intrigued. Until he flies the coop, though, we need that per diem for him. We’re stretched a little thin…” Silence and the pacing footsteps of a phone call, “If he does cut out, this would be the best time for it…” More pacing and then sounds of her taking a seat. “I’m doing the best I can, just send the money, Dimitri.”</p>
<p>Her hand would be wound up in her hair right now, clawing her head into a self-accusatory cradle. Felix’s memory leapt back the years to that green hair spreading across his pillow.</p>
<p>— —</p>
<p>
  <em>“Adrestia,” she had said, “is fragmenting not because of the haves and the have-nots, but because of I-wills or I-won’ts. Edelgard will act like she’s mobilizing the proletariat, like she isn’t another CEO mogul, but the only people she intends to liberate are those already of her standing. And to do it, she’s going to drive a conflict that could devour the whole continent.”</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>“Pity.” Felix’s head rested on her chest while she stretched the politics wide across the ceiling, fingers gesturing upward as if pointing toward a map that they could both see.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>He had his own way of thinking about it: vengeance. Edelgard was vengeful, Dimitri was vengeful, Claude’s vengeance was in having something to prove, Rhea of the Silver Snow Group was perhaps the most vengeful. Even Byleth had it a little bit. So he—Felix—wouldn’t be.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>“All we have to do is decide whether we’re to be Robin Hood or the art thief?” She asked.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>One hand came down to stroke his hair. He leaned his head into it, revealing a tattoo dripping down his shoulder: coded lines of thieves cant surrounded a long blade.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>“Robin Hood sounds too chivalric.”</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>Her fingers traced the black ink of the blade, brushing over the stippling. It offset the Crest of Fraldarius that was tattooed into his right lat. For years, he had considered a cover-up for that Crest tattoo, but he was always too busy to schedule the appointment.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>“Indeed, even as outlaws, we must always eschew chivalry.”</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>“You asked me what I want—that’s what I want.”</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>“Art thieving it is then.”</em>
</p>
<p>— —</p>
<p>Felix knocked on the door, and Mercedes opened it, “Oh, Felix.” Mercedes didn’t hesitate to hug him, hitting a little kiss against his blushing cheek.</p>
<p>Byleth looked up from a table strewn with papers and held his gaze over Mercedes’ shoulder. The moment protracted, and he thought he saw a real smile twist her lips before she banished it. But Byleth was a liar.</p>
<p>“Mercedes, arrange it with Dimitri,” Byleth held out a phone to the blond coordinator. “I’m bringing Fraldarius back to Faerghus. It’s time to get us out of here.”</p>
<p>“You got it, Professor,” Mercedes said, taking the phone and going into a different area of the suite. Felix could hear Mercie putting on her most sugary-sweet voice.</p>
<p>Byleth leaned forward over the table and ticked something off a list. She had changed from her cocktail dress into a pair of black leggings and a much-too-large button-down. Around her neck was a thin golden chain, and as she leaned back, she clutched whatever hung from it to keep it secure beneath her shirt. A strange gesture from Byleth, uncertain and soft.</p>
<p>He had once thought he could tell her truth from her lies. There was a tone, a flutter, a squint. Now, though, he wasn’t so sure.</p>
<p>Byleth would do anything for her strategies. If she ever thought with her heart, he suspected she would shrivel and die from the exposure to feelings. Salt poured over a slug. So why was he even there? It’s possible he wanted to expose her, once and for all, and rip that silver tongue right from her throat.</p>
<p>She gestured for him to sit at the table. “I have a question for you.” Her large eyes were now steady, calculated; her gestures as far as possible from that vulnerability they had exhibited around the necklace.</p>
<p>“Hit me.”</p>
<p>She smirked, “You have a partner out here in Adrestia. A guy by the name of Ashe Ubert?” </p>
<p>“So?” No point in wondering how she knew about Ashe. If she had been tailing him, she would know about everything.</p>
<p>“Is Ubert as good a safe-cracker as you think he is?”</p>
<p>“Oh—oh yeah. Not by your dad’s standards, but he’s a natural talent and willing to work hard.”</p>
<p>“And you trust him?”</p>
<p>“More than I trust any of the rest of you.” In a room full of criminals, trust was a four-letter word.</p>
<p>“Want to give him a call, then? We could use someone of his skills.”</p>
<p>“What’s his name?” Annie asked, popping her headphones off one ear. Computer in her lap, she was gearing up to run a background search. Her fingers were already tap-typing across the keyboard in rapid stutters. “Ashe Ubert,” she muttered, “Picked up twice for pickpocketing, once in Faerghus and once here in Adrestia. And… suspected for robbing a bookstore,” she looked at Felix incredulously. “That’s a low blow.”</p>
<p>“He likes to read. And he returned the books.”</p>
<p>“Kid needs to find a library.” Annie flicked through the background search. “You really think we should take this Ubert guy to steal the Chalice of Beginnings? He looks pretty green…”</p>
<p>Byleth looked at Felix to ask his opinion, but Felix’s mouth had dropped open. “We’re stealing what? That’s our mark?” He picked up a photo of the Chalice from the table. “But that’s in Garreg Mach!”</p>
<p>Byleth could read the headlines across his face like the 6 pm news,</p>
<p>
  <em>GARREG MACH TIGHTENING SECURITY: Hiring Foreign Mercenaries?</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>Garreg Mach, the former seat of the church of Seiros, says it won’t tolerate any more theft of its sacred relics. A representative from the administrative office, Seteth, informs us that they plan to keep the galleria and the private art exhibits open. However, much of Garreg Mach’s historical holdings will be out of reach for the average citizen. Nonetheless, that won’t stop the chapel from hosting those elaborate wedding ceremonies that provide the financial backing to keep the monastery’s staff in uniforms…</em>
</p>
<p>Byleth leaned her chin on her fist and watched him.</p>
<p>“You think you’re up for it?”</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>
  <span class="small">Mood Board—</span>
  <br/>
  <span class="small">Byleth (think Clooney, Ocean’s 11) rapping:</span>
  <br/>
  <span class="small">I got a backup plan, to my backup plan, to backup my back up plan</span>
</p><p>Next Up: “The New Kid”</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. The New Kid: Gunmetal and Green</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Some downtime while the crew recruits Ashe as a safebreaker.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>At first glance, Ashe Ubert wasn’t just green behind the ears. He had lawn clippings for veins and chartreuse in his eyes. For one, Byleth had never known another thief to come the first time you called them. Recruiting burglars was like herding cats. They were suspicious, only came if you offered rich foods, and they may or may not claw you during a tummy rub. Ashe made it easy, though; he was the cat who was just happy to be there.</p><p>Byleth found him at the rendezvous-point pawing through the dubious treasure trove of flea market stalls. His hands gravitated toward the books. Shitty sci-fi paperbacks, stuff so antiquated they put them in bins on the street just to offload them: trips to the moon, round tables in space, Jules Verne’s natural histories of exotic locales. This kid was a bit of a dreamer.</p><p>“How’d you get hooked up with Felix?” She asked.</p><p>“He caught me picking his pocket,” Ashe palmed an antique watch from a stall and rubbed it against his sleeve to see the gun-metal beneath a patina of grime. “How much for this?” He called out to the bearded gentleman with the pouchy eyes standing behind the booth.</p><p>“I’ll give it to you for 60.” The booth keeper said. He looked Ashe up and down from his gray hair to his sweetly freckled face. The pickpocket wore soft colors that put others at ease. An effective defense.</p><p>“30 and it’s a deal.” Ashe punctuated his offer with a smile. Byleth could spot a player at his game. As far as bartering went, Ashe was well-ranked.</p><p>“45 and I’ll throw in one of those books.”</p><p>“Those books are worth nothing. 35 for the watch, and I take one of the books.”</p><p>“What are you playing at, kid?” The stall keeper's voice was loud enough to draw attention, but Ashe’s nerves remained steely.</p><p>He raised the watch, “The dust is so thick on this piece, no one’s touched it for years. I want to help you make what’s probably your only sale today, but I don’t have to.” He gestured putting the watch down and began the walkaway. Byleth’s trained eye tracked the timepiece as it disappeared up his sleeve. She took a step back from the booth to pressure the negotiation.</p><p>New thought. If Ashe was green on the inside, his external casing was all gunmetal, and it had seen some time.</p><p>“Fine, fine. 35 for the watch and take the fuckin’ book.” Ashe paid the man and grabbed the book bound in burgundy faux leather. Jules Verne, an old watch—would he buy a snuff case next?</p><p>“So, Felix—,” she began again, leading him back to the hotel.</p><p>“Right, well Felix grabbed his wallet back out of my hand and put a knife to my throat. It was so fast I didn’t even see it happen.”</p><p>Ashe had the mannerisms of a Fodlan hybrid. The set of his shoulders was all Faerghus, stiff and inflexible. He walked with an Adrestian swagger. But the way he threw his hands up in excitement, that was all Leicester. She smiled slightly. Like her, he was something of a stray.</p><p>“Goddess,” his voice rose, “I was so impressed, I wasn’t even scared. I just said something along the lines of, ‘You’re like an action hero from a book!’”</p><p>Byleth imagined it easily, Felix’s restless eyes flicking across Ashe’s open face, deliberating on whether he was more insulted or flattered. “He looked like he was going to kill me just for saying so, and then—” Ashe stopped to grin, “He told me that I had promise.”</p><p>“Yeah, that sounds like him.” Actually, it sounded a lot like how she had met Felix, but in reverse. “You got off lucky. If you had told him he belongs at Arthur’s round table, you wouldn’t be here now.”</p><p>“Nobody reads about Arthur anymore.” He was right. The world had become much too complex to dream about enlightened kings and chivalry.</p><p>“What’s with the watch?” Byleth asked.</p><p>“I collect antiques. This one was cast from an old cannon. Can you imagine?”</p><p>Byleth had carried a centuries-old canvas in a grimy backpack across the entire continent. The night that her life had changed completely, she had touched papyrus with her bare fingers. On a lark, she had worn to dinner a pearl bracelet that had once been passed down to each crown princess of Faerghus. But could she say that she liked antiques? Probably not.</p><p>If Ashe liked old things, she was about to make his day.</p><p><br/>
— — —</p><p><br/>
Trap beats vibrated the suite door at all hours, and Annette didn’t even smoke. She had her highs from the magic that happened between herself and her computer.</p><p>Did Annette sleep? It was unclear. Did she ever go in her room? What does it matter if no one ever saw her do it. When she wasn’t on the couch with her computer illuminating her face in garish front-light like a zombie creature, she was hopping around in her millennium falcon t-shirt and skinny jeans disinfecting the entire suite.</p><p>Mercedes would be making cucumber and tomato canapes for lunch or phyllo-dough wrapped pistachio desserts for coffee-hour, and Annette would grab each plate she dirtied out from under her to immediately start the washing. One hand snacked on batters, while the other wiped the counter right under the plate Mercedes would be setting down. Mercie was used to it.</p><p>Felix didn’t know how Byleth could stand that energy, except that Byleth wasn’t in the suite much either. Evidence of her was everywhere, though. There was her plain yogurt in the suite fridge. There was her room, door-cracked and messy. Not that Felix was looking, he just happened to notice half a pair of leggings jammed under the door.</p><p>There was also the table, the one space of the suite Byleth had forbidden Annette from cleaning, where Byleth had left all her planning. Papers spread across its surface in cuttings, itineraries, and cryptic lists. Felix flipped past one news cutting about the Death Knight to find another, and then another. “The Death Knight, huh? She’s been collecting his press clippings.”</p><p>“Do you know him?” Mercedes asked stepping away from the kitchenette, an apron half-covering her soft, out-of-season sweater dress.</p><p>“Know him? It’s the secret identity of an assassin, right? Von Hresvelg hires him for her dirty work.” Felix scanned the top clipping.</p><p>“Yes, I just wondered if you might have run into him.”</p><p>“Not everybody in Adrestia knows each other. Much as I enjoy testing my skills, the stories I’ve heard about him…” Kidnapping and ransom, people disappearing in the night. The Death Knight was like something out of a slasher flick, but he was the real deal.<br/>
 <br/>
Mercedes walked back into the kitchen, her eyes sad. She tended to kept her past quiet. It was meant as a mercy, because all backstories are simply ghost tales we tell ourselves to keep track of where we’ve been. And horror is an acquired taste.</p><p>By the time she was adopted from the church of Seiros’ vestigial hospice wing, where she had learned first aid and nursing, Mercedes had three books completely memorized. They were: <em>The Art of Fhirdiad Pastry</em>, <em>Thirty Ghost Stories of Historical Faerghus</em>, and <em>The Anarchist’s Cookbook</em>.</p><p>They say you never leave your foundations behind. Mercedes’s first big successful project was making Napoleans with mousse and puff pastry; these riches she had joyfully settled onto the flimsy chipboard table manufactured at the factory where her adoptive father worked. Napoleons were still her signature dessert. Of course, you can always improve, and she had come a long way from unstable explosives and Molotov cocktails.</p><p>Demolitions are a rare passion, and when you find someone who can exercise skill, thought, and sweetness as they blow shit all to hell, then you know she’s a keeper. It was Annette who had brought Mercedes into the crew. Demolitions weren’t high on Byleth’s list of preferred infiltration methods, and explosion as maid service always meant clearing the area even after successful jobs. Too much shit blows up in a town, and suddenly everyone gets watchful.</p><p>Still, there are some jobs where a few explosives do the trick. Byleth realized she had hit a wall one day when she and Felix were lifting a Vermeer secreted away by a floor safe in an apartment on Fhirdiad’s aristocratic side of town. Explosives were their best option for getting the safe out of the floor, and once unearthed, the safe itself was as vulnerable as a stick of butter.</p><p>Annette knew a girl from school who could make the most delicious hazelnut tarte and some reliable bombs on the side. The Vermeer had been a counterfeit; they sold it anyway. Mercedes had been the real deal, though.</p><p>While Mercie returned to her baking, Felix flipped through the rest of Byleth’s mess. She had printed a masterplan of Garreg Mach. The top page showed the freshly renovated tourist trap all marked up in soft dark pencil with Byleth’s cryptic notation. Below this page was a palimpsest of more pages and notes that grew fainter through the layers of translucent architects’ vellum.</p><p>Each page he flipped shed years from the building, each page was riddled with Byleth’s code. Flipping deeper, he found the ruins and foundations of the old monastery, turning it back three-hundred, then four-hundred years, as it was destroyed and rebuilt.</p><p>“She’s been planning this for a long time…” he said out loud, as Mercedes came over his shoulder with a tray of the pistachio pastries.</p><p>“I’ve never seen her so obsessed with something. She withdrew for about a year and nobody heard from her. We all disbanded and ran our own businesses.” Felix liked that Mercedes was professional enough to consider bespoke gadgetry and bomb-making a ‘business’. “Then, all of a sudden, she called! She had a big job and we had no time to lose. It’s the Professor, you know, so of course we were all on board.”</p><p>Felix flipped through the floorplans to the very last page. Here Garreg Mach monastery looked more medieval than ever. There were small cubby dormitories, large halls, an officers’ academy for training holy knights. Byleth had barely made any notes on these deeper pages, but here was one—in permanent pen, no less. She circled a small space at the end of the dormitories, close to the steps of the old bathhouses, and wrote in plain letters, <em>What’s under Garreg Mach?</em></p><p>“Take at least one of these,” Mercedes said, gently pushing the pastries toward him. “You don’t mind nuts, and it only contains a tiny tiny bit of honey. Not too sweet, I promise.”</p><p>“Fine.” Felix picked one off the tray with two of his fingers, thinking they were much too sticky for a <em>tiny tiny bit of honey</em>, but he ate it anyway. “What’s that mean?” He pointed to the blue ink circle.</p><p>“I’m not sure,” Mercedes said, “But I think it has something to do with the Professor asking me to make floor explosives.”</p><p>Felix circled the spot with his finger. “Do you know why Dimitri wants this chalice?”</p><p>“I know as little as you do. Byleth has a lot to fill us in on, doesn’t she? But I heard that Edelgard’s willing to kill for it, and Garreg Mach will rip itself to pieces if it’s lost.”</p><p>Garreg Mach had completed its downward spiral three years ago. The bohemians had all fled to other towns and mountain communes, leaving the city to high rents, tourist resorts, businessmen, and bankers. Mach’s old guard grew up, stopped bucking the system; some grew rich, others merely complacent. Only a few still had that old Peter Pan complex that was hell-bent on a more egalitarian Fodlan. Only a few. Would Byleth take on a job that could destabilize the entire continent?</p><p>Mercedes placed another nut pastry in front of him. “Remember, Felix, the best investments are immaterial.” Felix crunched the pastry. The honey wasn’t really all too bad.</p><p><br/>
— — —</p><p><br/>
Like a hailstorm pummeling grass on the Tailtean plains, Byleth burst through the suite door trailing Ubert in her wake. She shot straight to the table and started clearing an area, stacking the news clippings and printed background checks on top of the vellum floorplans.</p><p>“—We deal in art and artifacts,” she was saying by way of onboarding the new recruit. “We don’t run drugs and we aren’t robbing banks. And if either of those are what you’re into, you should go find yourself another crew.”</p><p>“Just art, got it,” Ashe squeaked.</p><p>“There are a lot worse things to specialize in, believe me. Art, like safe-cracking, takes skill, and we appreciate skill. Felix has vouched for yours, so I want to see it.”</p><p>She went into her room. The noises of Byleth kicking aside her possessions to find whatever she was looking for were almost as loud as Annie’s music.</p><p>“Hi, I’m Ashe,” the recruit said waving around and spurring both women to kindly introduce themselves.</p><p>Ashe was looking at Felix. Annette was looking at Ashe. Felix was rolling his eyes to the ceiling. Mercedes was pulling a tray of flatbreads from the oven for lunch.</p><p>“It would be nice to have a more savory cook around,” she commented blithely.</p><p>Byleth came out of the room, kicking her way through the door with a foot and carrying the small hotel safe, which she had wrestled from the back of her closet.</p><p>“Aren’t thieves supposed to be graceful?” Felix commented as Byleth stumbled slightly below the safe’s awkward burden.</p><p>“I’ll come drop this on your foot. Then we’ll see how graceful you are,” she snapped back; Felix smirked.</p><p>It was only a small safe unit; however, even small safes tended to be larger and bulkier than one would think. Once you fortified a steel container with enough metal to harbor all of one’s prized treasures, it was bound to become cumbersome. It’s why we hide them—in walls, in closets, in the floor—to pretend that these coveted treasures can be small, paltry things. Byleth slammed it down on the table.</p><p>“Okay Ashe, I want you to open this safe only using manipulation. I don’t want to see you anywhere near a drill. Got it?”</p><p>“Uhhh…”</p><p>“Annie, music off—he needs to be able to hear. Mercedes, do you mind grabbing a stethoscope from your med bag for him?”</p><p>“Of course, Professor.” Apron strings trailed behind Mercedes as she ducked into her room.</p><p>“We’ll get you proper tools once we get to Fhirdiad.” Byleth pulled out a chair for Ashe to sit in. He perched.</p><p>“Can I ask how long the combination is?”</p><p>“You tell me.”</p><p>“Well, this looks like a Zoltan CX560, which is fairly standard here in Adrestia. And they usually have a six-digit code.”</p><p>“Yep,” Byleth smiled, slow and purposeful. It didn’t help to diffuse Ashe’s anxiety. He still looked like he was about to piss himself. “So get cracking.”</p><p>Mercedes handed Ashe the stethoscope with a smile and put a small plate of her pistachio pastries at his elbow. Byleth sat at the other end of the table, lording over her stacks of paper.</p><p>“Can I—,” Ashe asked, “can I please have some scratch paper?” She handed a notepad and pencil across the table.</p><p>The suite descended into silence as Ashe worked at the safe. After a few minutes, Felix went out to train at the hotel gym. Byleth typed into her phone. Mercedes cut tomatoes and basil for the flatbreads. Annette fed data from Byleth and Felix’s icy exchanges into her latest GPT-model. She was planning on using the machine intelligence to write the perfect romance novel.</p><p>Before she was Annie D., Annette Dominic went to prep school. She was perhaps the only one who thought this worth mentioning, and it wasn’t from any misplaced snobbishness. Annie could single-handedly structure a server farm in the back of a van and hack through the intelligence centers of an Adrestian casino, but she had no idea how to market herself on a resume, CV, or hyper-encrypted blackmarket profile board. Therefore, she found it worth mentioning that she attended school at the Royal Academy of Faerghus, that her GPA was pristine, and that she had participated in show choir. No employer in their right mind would care, but Byleth had thought it was funny.</p><p>If prep school improv had taught Annette anything, it was that no matter how many little ditties and tunes she made up, she wasn’t going to have the wit or measure of Shakespeare. Annette wasn’t discouraged. She resolved to become the Shakespeare of computers.</p><p>She started with scamming personal ID numbers. She wasn’t trying to be a criminal. She was trying to find her long-lost father, the man who had walked out on her when she was just a kid. Schooldays were spent tracking other people’s internet activity. And, one thing led to another—what with student loans and her mom doing the best she could—until she was tracking and selling IDs.</p><p>Annette enjoyed the puzzles, the learning. She wasn’t thinking about potentially ruining other people’s lives. That guilt had come home to roost when she had accidentally stolen the ID number of another student, a girl named Mercedes von Martritz. What was worse? Mercedes learned about Annette’s hobbies through school gossip and asked her about it. What was even worse? Mercedes forgave her.</p><p>Annie started collecting funds to reroute back into the IDs that she had stolen. She knew it was a weak justice, but it was how she had made a name for herself. So, when it was past time for Byleth and Felix to bring a hacker on board because they were still working analog in an overwhelmingly digital world, her name stood out.</p><p>Back then, they were young and green. Fresh spring leaves, tipped upward to receive the rain.</p><p>— — </p><p>
  <em>“Annette Dominic?” Felix flipped the CV papers back and forth in his hands as if they were an etch-a-sketch. Shake the paper enough and the problem would go away.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“Yeah, why not?”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“She looks silly.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Byleth came up behind him and draped her arms around his neck, chaste and proprietary. “She has a list of referrals on the whispernet longer than your rap sheet.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Felix raised his eyebrows. “Don’t cast shade on my rap sheet. Couldn’t she have fabricated those if she’s a hacker?”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“If she can falsify her online footprint that well, then she’s exactly what we need.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“Why her, though?”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“She’s the only person I’ve ever seen who bragged about lighting three different kitchens on fire while cooking dinner. That takes perseverance, you know? I would have stopped after the first kitchen I lit on fire.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Felix shrugged. The gesture raised and lowered Byleth’s arms mantled around his shoulders. He sincerely doubted that; if Byleth wanted something, she would stop at nothing, no matter whose kitchen she was burning.</em>
</p><p>— — </p><p>Ashe was still working when Felix returned from the gym, hair falling out of a sweaty braid and workout glow on his cheeks. Byleth walked over to where he was pouring himself a glass of water in the small kitchen.</p><p>“Why does our safe cracker look like he’s about to piss himself over a simple hotel safe?”</p><p>“Because you’ve been hovering. Give him some space.”</p><p>Byleth grimaced and pulled a tomato from Mercedes’ pile to eat.</p><p>“What’s in the safe anyway?” Felix asked, refilling the water glass.</p><p>“My prized possession—something of such deep emotional value—”</p><p>“Ah, so it’s empty, then.”</p><p>She looked at him like a bug she wanted to squash, “Empty… yeah.”</p><p>“Hey,” Annette said, coming up behind them, “Who ate the last nut pastry?”</p><p>“I don’t know,” Byleth said, surprised. “I didn’t even get one.”</p><p>“Wasn’t me, I hate sweets,” Felix was rinsing honey off his fingers.</p><p>Mercedes smiled and surreptitiously brushed a pastry flake from Felix’s workout jacket, “Maybe a ghost took it. I’ll make you more treats tomorrow, Annie.”</p><p>It was two hours of Ashe bending his head close to the safe, twiddling dials, marking down numbers, scratching his head, making a note, and then nodding affirmatively, before he had it open.</p><p>Manipulating a safe takes patience and focus. It’s not entertaining. It took even longer when he was nervous, and Byleth’s presence made him nervous. That was good for training because a full-blown heist would probably make him nervous too.</p><p>The moment that latch clicks, though, and the door pops ever-so-slightly outward, all the nerves are justified. The anticipation is enough to send shivers: It’s a grand portal, a gateway to someone’s treasure. All eyes turned to Ashe as he reached into the small safe.</p><p>“There is something in here.” The thief’s hands pulled out a large book case-bound in real brown leather.</p><p>Byleth weighed her options between being a hardass and being a nurturing teacher. She settled on nurturing. “That’s my dad’s journal. He kept detailed notes of everything from politics to safebreaking. I’ve bookmarked what you should study.”</p><p>“Jeralt Eisner,” Ashe read. “Your dad was Jeralt Eisner? But he’s a legend!” Ashe flipped through the book, “Code cracking, on vaults, bomb dismantling, how to escape from a morgue…”</p><p>Byleth nodded. “Focus on safe-cracking for now.”</p><p><br/>
— — —</p><p><br/>
For the few days that Dimitri spent dragging his heels to arrange their way through the border between Adrestia and Faerghus, the crew was supposed to be cooling their heels in Enbarr.</p><p>Except that cooling one’s heels sounds like a pleasant and relaxing thing to do, and Byleth was finding herself far from relaxed as Felix stalked his way in and out of the suite. He badgered her with questions about the plan. Then, just as easily, he gave her the silent treatment.</p><p>She found herself glad when he went out to wrap up his loose ends throughout the city. Normally, she might have shadowed him. But there was so much to do and he was so irritating, she decided to leave him to his fate. If he was kidnapped at this point? She shrugged, so be it.</p><p>The truth was, Felix had almost bailed on them four times now. Only he knew why he hadn’t. Adrestian art wasn’t the cash crop it had been back when he and Byleth had been running their grifts. Ashe was a good kid, but it’s not like they had been robbing banks or pushing forgeries. His pockets were too empty for his goals; ain’t that always the way?</p><p>Like everyone else in the game, Felix was constantly looking for a way out. The desire to get off-grid became more pronounced with every year. One last job with Byleth could give him enough to vanish completely. It just sucked that ‘couldn’t live with her, couldn’t live without her’ was becoming as true as it was prosaic.</p><p>The morning before their trip into Faerghus, Felix showed up to Byleth’s closed door with his hands wrapped for boxing. Layers of bandage and tape muffled his knock, but Byleth appeared promptly, kicking aside the dress that she had been wearing the night before.</p><p>“Come train with me,” Felix said. “You still train, don’t you?”</p><p>“Of course.” Byleth was already wearing leggings, and as far as he was concerned, all she would need was shoes to be ready for sparring. If she could find her shoes in all that mess.</p><p>“Well, are you coming?”</p><p>“I’ll meet you down there.”</p><p>The hotel weight room offered a meager yoga studio for training, and Felix had already made his home there. He used his water bottle and towel to mark his territory on one wall, his jacket against another, and he had training weights distributed throughout the room as if daring anyone else to use the space when he had it so occupied.</p><p>Byleth didn’t say anything. She stretched while Felix warmed up on the other side of the room. They sneaked looks at each other in a call-and-response of annoyed curiosity. Felix wore his hair in a braid, and it was whipping around his shoulders as he jabbed a warmup. Byleth readjusted her spandex leggings and entered the detached flow that always carried her through her training.</p><p>“Are you ready yet?” It was all the warning she had when Felix’s first jab came by her head.</p><p>She whipped around. Finding him too close she threw both her hands into his chest and pushed him. Felix stumbled backward but quickly caught himself. Byleth raised her wrapped and taped hands, ready position. He raised his eyebrows and slid a smirk.</p><p>He came at her punching; feint left, feint right, duck easily under his tornado kick. He overestimated her height—who had he been sparring with lately?</p><p>He covered his face with wrapped hands to block her punches. Feint, feint, then brought his leg up for another swift kick, this time to her chest.</p><p>Byleth pulled back smoothly and went in for a low kick, one leg shooting out while the other crouched. Felix shifted out of the way just in time and took the advantage as she righted herself.</p><p>He stood above her. As if possessed, he put his hands on both of her shoulders and used his weight from above to push to her knees. As she hit hard against the ground, she made an audible <em>oomph</em>. He leaned into her shoulders with his pressure. Pain shot through her calves and jarred her hips.</p><p>There were ways that she could reverse this and stand up. She should have maneuvered until she could kick his feet out from under him. She should have repositioned her leverage and surged upward to at least get him stumbling. </p><p>Instead, she looked up at him—at the hair disengaging itself from his braid and making soft tendrils around his head, at the barely bridled anger in his eyes, at the way his lips quivered, hating her.</p><p>She struggled, trying to engage her legs to lift as he pushed her harder to the ground.</p><p>He had lived in Adrestia for years, falling asleep to the jingles of slot machines. His father had been killed in a case that was now closed, unresolved, and growing colder every day. And where was she? Where had she been?</p><p>She tried to tuck her toes under her feet for some leverage, but he was leaning too heavily. Aching, stuck, for once her hands felt so useless. What was she supposed to do? Punch at his knees, headbutt him? That had never been how they sparred; it had always been respectful.</p><p>
  <em>“Vengeance,” he had once said. “It turns men into beasts. It turns friends into Boars.”</em>
</p><p>She saw the coals cool from Felix’s eyes right before the pressure left her shoulders. He reached for her hand and helped to pull her up. “Come on, Byleth, we’re not done yet.”</p><p><br/>
— — —</p><p><br/>
“Well if you want to make a burglar character,” Annie was saying as Byleth and Felix re-entered the suite, “you’ll need to be a rogue. Then you’ll get automatic lock-picking skills. And you should choose a race with dark-vision, like an elf or a—”</p><p>“Dark vision? What’s that?”</p><p>“It helps you see in the dark, of course. As a burglar, you can steal things without using a torch.” She took Ashe’s half-filled character sheet out of his hands and started calculating stats for him.</p><p>“I wish I had dark vision in real life.”</p><p>“Why’s that?” Annette asked absently, as she crunched the numbers to give him the best advantage.</p><p>“Well, I’m always afraid things are going to jump out at me from the dark. You know, ghosts…” Ashe had lowered his voice when he saw Byleth and Felix, afraid they might overhear.</p><p>“That’s a reasonable fear,” Mercedes said. “You never know when a ghost could be lurking nearby.”</p><p>“Mercie, don’t scare us!” Annie made a mark on the character sheet in her hand. “You’re going to have high dexterity, but you’re not going to be very strong…” She looked around the computer screen at him. “Your character isn’t very imaginative, is it?”</p><p>“Well, how did you make your character, Mercedes?” Ashe asked, appealing to the nicest person in the room.</p><p>“Annie made her for me. I’m a cleric healer.”</p><p>“Okay, well I’m fine with the rogue…”</p><p>Felix, sway-hipped and languid, raised his eyebrows at Byleth.</p><p>“You’re not going to make a character?” Byleth teased.</p><p>“Join us, Felix!” Annette called, her hearing extraordinarily good for someone who sat in headphones ten hours a day.</p><p>Felix waved them off and leaned on the counter next to where Byleth was making tea. “What happened to playing poker? When did we switch to D&amp;D?”</p><p>“Too many competitive criminals in one room. Lots of hurt feelings, cheating, debts, death threats, you know how it goes. We decided that a cooperative game would be better.” She was still looking at him, a question lingering in the corner of her mouth as she handed him a mug of spiced tea.</p><p>“What?” He rubbed back some of his hair in a gesture that reminded him of just how badly he needed a shower.</p><p>“Nothing," she said, still wary of another angry flare up from him. "I’m just glad to have my partner-in-crime back.”</p><p>He snorted into his mug of tea. “I’ve been pretty broke without you.”</p><p>“Pickpocketing with Ubert wasn’t doing it for you?” Felix swiped a side-eye at her. “I’m kidding,” she said. “He seems like a nice kid. A little jumpy, though, we’ll have to work that out of him.”</p><p>“You said you had a reason—”</p><p><em>—for leaving him.</em> “Another time.” Her words were quick, sharp.</p><p>“This is how you expect to rebuild trust?”</p><p>“Ask me something else, then.”</p><p>“Did you—you know—you and Claude?” He sent his eyes down into his tea, as hers went into the past.</p><p>— —</p><p>
  <em>Almost two years after leaving Felix, Byleth wasn’t sure if she was more lonely or bored when the job she was running with Claude switched from strictly business to extra-curricular. Claude had targeted her Achilles’ heel before they could even begin talking about the Renaissance-era tempera painting being kept in the Leicester ski town of Daphnel.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>He did it suavely as if he merely sought to touch her neck like one might seek to trace the curve of a heartbreakingly-imperfect brushstroke. And then, his finger had looped into her necklace and he was pulling it out.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>That was the first time that Claude had truly rumbled her. He took one look at the pendant and his eyes grew cold. “So it’s still like that, then?” He had said. “Here I thought you had a real appreciation for an outsider.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>She tucked the necklace away, vowing never to wear it on a job again. Because that’s what this had been, a job despite the two more weeks that she would continue sleeping with Claude’s cold eyes and false smiles, as he used her, in turn, to seal a deal over the yellowed and fraying tempera.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“There are other ways to be an outsider,” she had said. She massaged his shoulders as if that would smear away her fascination. Every gesture sought to ruin this sidequest, so she could get back to her main storyline. But she had lost the path; she was stuck, like a train on rails, to her backup plan. A month later, when she and Claude had cut the golden chain that bound them, they knew they would meet again on opposite sides of the game board.</em>
</p><p>— —</p><p>“He was a mark and he knew it.” Byleth realized too late that she had been touching her necklace and dropped her hand away from it quickly.</p><p>Felix ground his teeth. It was the answer he was hoping for, and yet, it still wasn’t satisfying.</p><p>“Where did you say you got that necklace?”</p><p>Byleth narrowed her eyes at him. “I didn’t.”</p><p>“Stolen?”</p><p>“This chain came from my dad. I’m not hypocritical enough to complain about stolen goods.”</p><p>“And there’s nothing hanging on it?”</p><p>“No, it’s just a chain.” She laughed unexpectedly. He had the urge to pull the necklace from beneath her shirt. “Maybe I’ll give you a closer look sometime.”</p><p>She pushed away from the counter and walked toward her room. “Stay sharp Fraldarius, tomorrow we head back to Faerghus.”</p><p> </p><p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>
  <span class="small">convinced Annette freestyles to the trap beats when no one’s around.</span>
</p><p>
  <span class="small">Annette:  throwing down in Vegas in my Darth Vader pj’s—</span>
  <br/>
  <span class="small">Annette:  Felix!! were you listening?!</span>
  <br/>
  <span class="small">Felix:  your flows are straight fire</span>
</p><p>Up Next:  “Enter, the Cavalry”</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Enter, the Cavalry</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Sweaters on and back to Faerghus to find the rest of the crew.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The Galatea crossing always hit Felix’s gut with that queasy, bottomless sensation of driving into the sky. Land suspended all around, you might as well be in free fall.</p><p>It was an optical illusion. The northern mountain passages kept the views close. Just rocks and pines. Once you passed through to the Ogmas’ western slope, though, it was big skies all around. More atmosphere than ground. See the earth littered with the shadows of lazy clouds.</p><p>A grand view, like an opera house with too many seats and no one to fill it.</p><p>Civilization loitered in cramped spaces. The people were exhausted from stretching themselves to fill gaps of atmosphere. They held their breath in the rarity of oxygen, and history overtook the present.</p><p>It happens to creatures of feeling, hunted down by their past.</p><p>Every heist in Faerghus was a reenactment. Thieves and detectives replayed roles that began ages ago, were happening now, and would happen again next week, next moon, next year. They followed the same footsteps, sang the same songs, spoke those same tired lines. Twenty-year-old slang.</p><p>Home was a cycle that begged to be broken. Endless loops of the past: brother—dead, national security; father—dead, same gig but they called it corporate security; Felix—dead? No but inevitable.</p><p>Bailing on Faerghus was like escaping from a beneficial marriage plot. Despise the medication, not the disease. And in the brave new world outside, Felix had spiraled into his own loop of picked pockets, roulette wheels, and traceless robbery.</p><p>The sky was too much.</p><p>The land was too small. The towns too empty. The storefronts unfilled. Their signs warped in decay. The cycle continued. Night broke day upon its bed. Day burned night with scorn. And everything trickled forward without movement.</p><p>Alien landscapes that looked like a Mars movie set punctuated the lows in the Outlaw Country that Annette played over the car speakers. The tires of the small sedan eroded highways that were more gravel than asphalt, and the tightly-packed passengers shifted against each other. Red-trimmed ridges of rocks rippled and fell in the coppery sun.</p><p>Soon, they would pass the western slope of Galatea and speed onward toward the fertile marshlands of the Tailtean Planes which surrounded Blaiddyd City. And to the north? Home: stone mountains, quiet lakes, dusty pines, and cliffs at the edge of the world.</p><p>This stale land was the Faerghus Felix had known. It was not, however, the Faerghus that he was returning to. Just because Felix couldn’t break the cycle didn’t mean that the rest of Faerghus wasn’t trying to. Looking at a 50-million-year-old landscape and saying that the people haven’t changed at all is a fallacy one should only make once.</p><p>Felix leaned his head against the car window and peered out ahead. He could see Byleth’s reflection in the side mirror, her face blank in concentration as her eyes scanned something in her lap. He pulled his focus from her and stared out across the road. Finally, there was something to see. For the first time, they weren’t the only ones cruising the highway.</p><p>Two light-weight sports motorcycles passed them in the opposite direction, blue blurs with a noise of rolling thunder. The riders, one in burgundy leather pants, the other in gray leather with blue accents, bent low over their bikes and leaned forward as they hurtled down the road. Just past Annie’s car, they threw up gravel with twin illegal hairpin u-turns and flanked the little sedan.</p><p>Burgundy pants rode inches away from splatting himself on Felix’s backseat window. Red hair popped out from beneath a bike helmet, wind sweeping and feathering it at the base of the neck. Big brown eyes tried winking behind a tinted visor.</p><p>Sylvain greeted his old friend with a frantic wave like he was scattering a cloud of gnats, then he cranked his arm for Felix to roll down the window. Faerghus’s cold sunlight brought the blue out from Felix’s black hair, which instantly flew back as the window dropped between them.</p><p>“Welcome back, pal!” Sylvain shouted against the wind. Ever so slightly, Felix smiled.</p><p>Ingrid pulled close to the other side of the car. Through a blue-tinted visor, she counted passengers and gave a sharp turn of her hand. She waited for Byleth to mirror the gesture, then, she zoomed ahead, long blond hair flying out loose behind her.</p><p>The cavalry had arrived.</p><p> </p><p>— — —</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>Estate law was hit-or-miss. If she had to quantify it, Ingrid would say you had a fifteen percent chance of hitting something good, especially in the older neighborhoods of Leicester Alliance. Ingrid didn’t like quantifying Fortune though. Some part of her was still as superstitious as the poor country holler where she was raised.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>And it was thanks to Fortune that she came across a Cezanne original in a private residence in Derdriu while evaluating the estate. She set up a shell company from Adrestia to hide the identity of the painting and found a buyer from Faerghus who claimed that it was destined for another private exhibition.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>When she went to meet the buyer, though, he hadn’t a cent to his flaming red hair. It had been years since she saw Sylvain’s flirtatious grin, and the first thing he did was try to swindle her out of the painting. So she punched him.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>One black eye later, he was begging her to let him join up. Sylvain called their reunion fate; Ingrid called it idiocy, as they argued in an alley with a stolen Cezanne strapped to her back, while the Silver Snow Group, then known as the Art Loss Commission, was sending Thunderstrike Cassandra to track them down. The terrifying woman had interrupted them just as Ingrid was about to pummel Sylvain up against the brickwork again, and she chased them both down the street.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>It was their most amateur hour, and nothing would take it away from them. They split ways to give Catherine the slip, and when they met back up in the Derdriu train station, Ingrid found Sylvain eating a cream puff at a standing bar. He had already sketched a charcoal of her face—furious and howling with her fist raised—across a napkin. Not only did the powdery black strokes form a good likeness but they were also a perfect dupe for a young Da Vinci.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Ingrid was no fool. “So partners?” she had asked, patting the case that was holding the Cezanne.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“Partners,” he replied.</em>
</p><p> </p><p>— — —</p><p> </p><p>Dimitri owned three guest houses in Blaiddyd alone. He kept his merry band of thieves in one at the top of the hill. A generous gesture. Much as Dimitri enjoyed having friends in low places, he never saw them that way.</p><p>Blaiddyd City’s tall spires overlooked the plains and wetlands like lighthouses. Once necessary to defend Faerghus’s line of kings, these towers were now just for show. They made a crown around the skyline, and everything below was subject to flooding and freezing. It was hell on the concrete.</p><p>Annie parked the car on the street and hopped out, stretching her legs in clumsy lunges. The rest followed suit. Mercedes leaned against the car as if to say that sewing throughout a ten-hour driving day had been exertion enough. Felix hopped nimbly from the back and Ashe copied him. Byleth stepped off to the side, stretching her legs and rolling her shoulders.</p><p>Sylvain and Ingrid flanked the car with their bikes. “Ingrid!” Annie hopped toward the cyclist who had removed her helmet to reveal more long blond hair and cheekbones so high and angled they graced her tomboy features with a rare elegance.</p><p>Ingrid might have been the perfect femme fatale when tucked and pinned into an evening gown, but as she unzipped her leather jacket, it was to reveal her old college rugby jersey. College had been a scholarship deal. Ingrid grew up on the wrong side of the tracks in the badlands of Galatea, and she never let herself forget it.</p><p>Once called the Entrapment Queen, invalidated prenups paid her way through Charon Law School. Lure a cheater, then press litigation against them. Grifts just gray enough to keep her out of jail. Did she regret it? Only when you plied her with tequila. Cheap tactics like that were still better than her father’s marriage plots. Shouldn’t you get a free pass when your first fiance went six feet under?</p><p>Ingrid liked her freedoms simple. She could put beauty on or she could take it off, and no way in hell was she going to become some high-powered jerk’s trophy wife, expected to have her face done up first thing in the morning and to smile enigmatically at the company parties. She liked eating what she wanted, fighting what she wanted, saying what she wanted, and riding a damn good bike.</p><p>The red-head checking out her leather-clad ass was Sylvain. His early twenties had been a rowdy harvest of sluts of all sexes, and running the betting tables at a local night club that kept its eyes between the strippers’ tits rather than the false bottom of the poker table’s cash box. But his truer talent was in forgery.</p><p>To anyone who knew him, this didn’t come as a surprise: Sylvain had learned to counterfeit personalities at his mother’s tit. He knew just about everybody, was begrudgingly liked by most, and had just enough enemies to keep life interesting. The man could sell ice to an Eskimo and snag strangers into his ‘inner circle’ with an indulgent wink. </p><p>Sylvain got his start check-washing. Turns out, forging handwriting to match an unscrubbed signature wasn’t too different from learning a Medieval scribal hand. There weren’t many who could grunge and destroy a historical facsimile as well as they could throw down ink and paint, and Sylvain was one of them. Somehow, at a black-tie event, ink on his fingers just added to his rakish charm.</p><p>And that was exactly why Ingrid had teamed up with him.</p><p>“Ashe here thought we were being car-jacked—on the highway!” Annette and Mercedes were crowding Ingrid up the back entrance to the guest house.</p><p>“So you’re the new guy? Welcome!” Ingrid swung a strong hand out to him. Byleth followed along behind, every bit of her willpower exerted in not hiding in a bush and spying on Sylvain and Felix.</p><p>“Well look who the cat dragged in.” Sylvain was saying, “Are you going to at least hug me, buddy?”</p><p>“We don’t hug, Sylvain.”</p><p>“Sure we do,” the red-head looped an easy arm around his childhood friend. “When it’s been years since I’ve seen you, we hug.”</p><p>Felix pulled away and checked out the motorbike. Light for good handling, tires and shocks that could take you off-road across the badlands; though, you might see some airtime. It looked a lot like freedom, and nothing from Faerghus had ever looked like freedom before.</p><p>“I’ll let you take it for a spin some time,” Sylvain ran a hand through hair wrecked by his helmet and the wind.</p><p>“I’m not riding bitch on another of your motorcycle adventures.”</p><p>“And I won’t make you.” Sylvain was laughing. “Does that seat look like it could fit both our asses? Well,” he pretended to look Felix up and down, “maybe your flat ass.”</p><p>“My ass is not flat! Do you know how many squats I do?” Felix was walking impatiently up the house entrance and not looking back. And, just as if no time had passed since they last met, Sylvain followed him.</p><p>“Well, come on, pull ‘em down, let’s see.”</p><p>“No, perv.”</p><p> </p><p>— — —</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>Wind dragged at Felix as he rode away from his brother’s grave.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“I can take you somewhere far,” Sylvain had said, for once with no other motive than to get his young friend away from the burial ceremonies. “We’ll go to the beach, ride along the sand. It’ll do you good to see some waves. Come on, Ingrid will cover for us.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Part of Felix wanted to protest; It’s not like Ingrid was having an easy time either. Sylvain should have taken her to the beach. Felix could handle himself.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Still, Felix had hopped on the back of Sylvain’s motorcycle. As a recent acquisition, it was the first step in the long con to piss off Sylvain’s parents, and the roar it made as they motored away was exactly the middle-finger both of them needed.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>They rode West, from mountainous Fraldarius into Fhirdiad, past the stone-walled museums and marble monuments they had been forced to study in school. Then westward still, until they hit the sands, Felix’s thirteen-year-old shoulder-length hair flying out behind the helmet that he had padded with an extra towel to keep it from slipping down.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>The beaches by Fhirdiad were chilly; their sands were rocks and pebbles notched into black silt from the river estuary.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“So you mean to go through with it?” Sylvain asked, curling his toes in yellow foam. “Leave home? Leave the position your dad has all set up for you? Go find your fortune elsewhere?”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>As if to show that he wasn’t afraid of the frigid water, Felix sunk his feet in up to his ankles. It only really felt cold when the waves pulled the water away.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“Fortune favors the bold. I can be bold, strong. I will be. I’ll get so strong.”</em>
</p><p> </p><p>— — —</p><p> </p><p>Sylvain squinted at the manuscript page Byleth brought in from Adrestia. “It’s real alright. And Dimitri already has a buyer?”</p><p>Byleth nodded. “Everything we make goes back into this heist. It’s not going to be cheap. We need an exact replica of the Chalice of Beginnings down to the gram.”</p><p>Sylvain put the manuscript down. “Leave it to me.”</p><p>They stared into the distorted mirror behind the wet bar that was tucked into a corner of the atrium. Its cabinets were stocked with all manner of hospitality goodies from booze to dope. Sylvain had even raided Dimitri’s stash of anti-depressants, while the rest of the crew staked out their rooms and settled into deep couches with reading material. Mercedes was sewing together some disguises for their infiltration plans. Annette was programming a robotic detonator. They had to assume Felix was outside training.</p><p>“…Felix—,” Sylvain was saying, “Hello, Professor, are you listening?”</p><p>“Huh, what? Sorry I was just thinking.”</p><p>“I was asking what’s going on with you and Felix. I usually don’t join crews with personal attachments like that.”</p><p>“Bad bluff,” Byleth smiled. “It’s always been personal with this crew...”</p><p>“Do you want to know what I think?” She gestured for him to continue. “You’re hoping that you and Fe get to be Bonnie &amp; Clyde again. And, you know, I’m here for it. But you’re not putting our lives on the line. Not when he looks like he wants nothing more than to stab you through the heart.”</p><p>“I think he’d shoot me at this point so his hands don’t get dirty. I’ll let you know if we graduate to the raw passion of stabbing, though.”</p><p>“Well that’s fun,” Sylvain shook his head, accidentally catching his reflection behind the bar.</p><p>“What are you really asking?” Byleth ignored the reflections. She knew her face was blank, empty. She didn’t need to ask the mirror.</p><p>“Do you think it could work? Between you and Felix? I have my own reasons to be more lax on this whole ‘no relationships’ rule.”</p><p>“You? The conman who switched hotel rooms every night to hide from former conquests? You want a relationship? I’ll believe it when I see it.”</p><p>“Harsh Professor!”</p><p>Byleth shrugged. Behind her customary deadpan, she was feeling as bitter as her glass of gin. “Felix has made it clear that door is closed.”</p><p>“Well, just let me know if you need a tongue full of sympathy. You know, I can stick my fingers in your mouth too.”</p><p>She sputtered astringent juniper across the counter. Did everyone know about her kinks? No. New question. How did everyone know about her kinks?</p><p>Sylvain grinned—all Cheshire, no seduction. “Just try giving him space. You know, distance makes the heart less stabby and all that.”</p><p>Byleth had her doubts. It seemed that five years’ distance was exactly what had made Felix’s heart so stabby in the first place. But she tried to give Felix space that week.</p><p>It wasn’t so easy when Felix would come stand so close to her that his arm hair would brush hers, and she couldn’t help imagining that arm wrapping around her shoulder. Or when she would notice him sparking smoldering looks at her from across the room, as if he was contemplating how perfectly his mouth would fit around her hip. And then, a gesture as small as his hand slightly brushing hers—all callous, no skin—could make her entire day.</p><p>It wasn’t so easy when she could hear him talking before she entered a room and he would immediately clam up once she was there. Or how he purposefully wasn’t inviting her to spar again after his morning runs with Ingrid.</p><p>It wasn’t so easy when the kind of space that Felix needed was the distance between the earth and the moon. Maybe it was even the distance between the Earth and Pluto. For the sake of Felix’s damaged pride, Byleth pretended she was on Pluto.</p><p>They talked. Byleth would say, “What are your thoughts on steel-reinforced doors?” and “Let’s make a plan for if they have security lasers.” Felix would say, “Sure,” and walk away. Byleth would later find some of Felix’s research printed out, all about state-of-the-art doors and lasers. On them, he scribbled, <em>key cards</em> and <em>agility until Annette can turn them off</em>.</p><p>Byleth missed her partner in crime. She stopped even bothering to fake smile. It was a marked improvement.</p><p>Downtime stretched the crew thin while Mercedes’ butter-rich cooking threatened to expand their waistlines. Ashe lent a hand in the kitchen, sauteeing fresh fish from the Blaiddyd market in between researching vaults and breaking open every padlock Byleth threw at him. But between Ingrid testily warning everybody of the legal repercussions of every fuck up, Sylvain snoring like a blown-out bass speaker every night, and Felix grumping about having to see Dimitri again, they weren’t the most pleasant crew on the high seas.</p><p>Felix came out of his room one day, having pointedly missed Byleth’s planning meeting, with his hair a jagged fucking mess. He had tried to cut it with a knife. In front of one mirror.</p><p>“Annie,” Byleth had said, “please fix Felix’s hair,” right before she walked out the door.</p><p><em>The best strategists</em>, her father had once told her as he peeled away scales from a fish, <em>do a lot more walking than they do plotting</em>. Oxygen in the brain. New ideas, solutions. Getting away from Felix’s face.</p><p>“Well you chopped it pretty unevenly, but if you comb it over like this and twist it up like so…” Annie worked some magic with a few hairpins. “No one will even know that you tried to cut it with a sword. Why did you cut it anyway?”</p><p>“Didn’t want to look so Adrestian.” As if capturing the past was as simple as a haircut.</p><p>“Haven’t you learned anything from those artists you peddle? Always use two mirrors.” Sylvain followed Felix’s stomping feet out of the room. “So, you and Byleth? Getting back together?”</p><p>“No. I’m here for the action. The money will be nice too.”</p><p>“That’s it?” Felix nodded jerkily while he used one of the hairpins Annette had just arranged to pick the lock to his own door. “I can’t believe you still lock your door from the outside.” Sylvain could barely make out Felix’s mumble but it sounded a lot like <em>‘privacy’</em>. “So you won’t mind if I take my shot with Byleth? I won’t try to marry her. Not my style.”</p><p>“Do what you want,” Felix shut his door in Sylvain’s face.</p><p>“Hey, Fe!” Sylvain shouted through the door, “I’m just joking. I wouldn’t do that to you. Come on, we’ll go get dinner, find some girls, you’ll forget about her all over again.”</p><p>But there was no forgetting about Byleth. Not when he kept having dreams about her crawling toward him on all fours begging him to take her back. Not when he could close his eyes and imagine the soft touch of her eyelashes against his jaw as she kissed the pulse out of his neck.</p><p>And he knew it was a dream because Byleth didn’t beg. If you had something she wanted, she worked you around until you did exactly what she wanted. She was so much better in dreams.</p><p> </p><p>— — —</p><p> </p><p>The night before their meeting with Dimitri, the crew found themselves crowding a table. Papers and schematics sprawled like conspirators for an elaborate dive into the most airtight vault of all time.</p><p>Notes everywhere: spell-lists and research books, scratch-pads listing their inventory and plunder. On the table was an erasable mat on which Annie had sketched a dungeon floorplan. Hexagonal rooms spanned outward into honeycomb corridors.</p><p>Even in their playtime, they were running heists. Yet, in their fantasy heists, they were warlocks and magicians, elves and orcs.</p><p>“Byleth isn’t here?” Felix asked popping his head into the group, while Annie calculated loot from the aftermath of their latest battle.</p><p>“She went out,” Ingrid muttered, fingers spinning a paladin figurine on a horse. “Something to do tonight.”</p><p>“Felix, since you didn’t make a character, you can join one of the others or...” Annie said, looking up from behind the DM’s partition.</p><p>“I don’t want a character. I’m not playing.” Nonetheless, he sat next to Ashe and picked up one of the miniatures. “This soldier is gripping his sword wrong. Don’t they get experts for this stuff?”</p><p>Ignoring him, Annie narrated as the gang had collected their loot. They were just entering a new room full of goblins to clobber when Sylvain pranced into the room, “Oh ho ho, anyone seen the Professor? She’s still on her hot date? Must be going well then.”</p><p>Ingrid landed an elbow in Sylvain’s ribs without even having to look back.</p><p>“—and Sylvain, a sorcerer with a charisma of 20 and no common sense, inexplicably finds where you guys are in the dungeon.” Annette narrated smoothly as if Sylvain’s entrance was written in the box text.</p><p>“We asked for deus ex machina, and we got Sylvain? This really sucks,” Ingrid buried her head in her hands.</p><p>“Byleth’s on a date?” Felix asked. Everyone ignored him.</p><p>“Enough D&amp;D, let’s gamble. B’s away so she won’t get all pissy about us betting away some paper.” Sylvain pulled an armchair next to Felix and sprawled.</p><p>“It’s not the paper she’s worried about so much as the time you pressed a scoring pencil up to Leonie Pinelli’s jugular over a pair of lost cuff links.” Ingrid’s memory was impeccable.</p><p>“Or the time Shamir almost gutted Felix for winning an entire page of uncial manuscript.”</p><p>“I’d still like to see her try,” Felix drawled, grumpily slumped.</p><p>“That was before she joined the Silver Snow Group.”</p><p>“Man, I hate the Silver Snow!”</p><p>“Byleth’s on a date?”</p><p>“Whatever, she’s not here. Let’s play cards,” Sylvain insisted again.</p><p>“We’re in the middle of a campaign,” Annette pointed out stubbornly as if the tabletop paraphernalia didn’t speak for itself.</p><p>“And which of you adventurers wants to pause for a card game?”</p><p>As if drawn by reluctant magnets everyone’s hands moved slowly upward.</p><p>“Fine fine! You’re two doors away from the secret, mysterious hidden tomb full of relics and masterwork weapons and all sorts of cool things, but you all decide to sit down on the ground with dead goblin bodies all around you, which is sooooo unsanitary, and pull out a deck of cards.”</p><p>“Now that’s what I’m talking about.” Sylvain started shuffling a real deck.</p><p>“Those better not be marked,” Ingrid pursed her lips and watched the cards flow through Sylvain’s hands like water.</p><p>“Around this pack of criminals? Ingrid, your suspicions wound me.”</p><p>“It’s going to be more than my suspicions wounding you when I catch you cheating.”</p><p>He grinned at her, “Do your worst.”</p><p>“Byleth’s on a date?” Felix asked again.</p><p>“Yeah, Fe, Byleth’s on a date.”</p><p>“With who?”</p><p>Cards were in hands. Eyes shifted suspiciously amongst each other.</p><p>“Didn’t ask. You guys are over, right?” Of course they were over. How could there be any doubt about that?</p><p>“Isn’t it irresponsible, though? We’re working a job now, and our strategist is dating.”</p><p>“You don’t have to worry about Byleth leaking information. She is a closed vault.”</p><p>Ingrid discarded an Ace. They were all fucked.</p><p>“That’s a polite way of saying she’s a good liar.”</p><p>“Something we should all find comforting,” Sylvain said, trying to eye Felix’s hand.</p><p> </p><p>— — —</p><p> </p><p>Byleth’s watch clicked the hour of her meeting. Then it clicked ten minutes past that. And another five. Lateness wasn’t unexpected, but it was unnerving. All loyalties these days were up for grabs, and the little stiletto knife tucked into her hair wouldn’t do much if she was facing a full ambush. He had promised he would always help her, but loyalty was easier said than done.</p><p>She had her phone face down on the table in between a white candle and a folded linen napkin. A few images of Garreg Mach’s floorplan were already pulled up from Annie’s ‘super-encrypted’ server. It was a careful balance. Overpreparing intimidates informants, but underpreparing could make them nervous.</p><p>Uncrossing her legs, she tracked the bearded man—pin-striped gray suit, crimson tie—as he walked to her table. His hair was swept backward from a jovial face etched with permanent laugh lines, but it was his goofy grin that made the deal.</p><p>“Alois, it’s so good to see you,” voice sincere, she rose to hug him. “Thanks for coming out here.”</p><p>“Anything for you. You need your big brother to lighten the load a little bit?”</p><p>Retorts about not being his real sister dried in her mouth, as her old friend sat across the table. “I’m looking for information on the Monastery District of Garreg Mach. You lived there as a kid, right?”</p><p>“What do you need to know?” Alois gestured for a round of beer.</p><p>“What’s beneath the monastery?”</p><p>“You mean a basement?”</p><p>“Some of the buildings have basements, yes.” She flipped her phone over and gestured at a few crawl-spaces and basements in the floorplan. “There’s this space beneath the cathedral, too. But I’m talking about below the entire district—the galleria and everything?”</p><p>Their beers had arrived and Alois took a hearty swallow. “Well actually, when I was young, those smaller galleries used to be classrooms.” Byleth already knew this from studying her floorplans, but he was getting closer to what she was asking. “There were rumors about tunnels underneath that whole space,” He gestured at the front of the Monastery District. “They were always unsafe. Full of cave-ins and bandits.”</p><p>“But you’ve been down there, right?”</p><p>“Now how do you know that? I imagine you’d have to be a regular old <em>mole</em> to dig through them these days, a regular tunneler, haha.” Byleth stiffened at the mention of a mole, then she forced herself to smile indulgently.</p><p>“Now, that sounds tough. Say Alois, if I was looking to hire a mole, where would they be?”</p><p>“You know those Garreg Mach gardeners take their jobs very seriously about rooting out vermin, but I have heard something.” He lowered his voice and shifted closer to her. “Rumor has it that one of the Adrestian jazz singers is bringing her tour to Mach City. Might be worth going to a show of hers.”</p><p>“I do love some good live music, but tell me more about how you went under the monastery.”</p><p>“There was an opening near the old dorm buildings where we orphans used to live. That would be the area they renovated into the current Leicestrian galleries. Well, at the end of it, before you get to the Guest Facilities steps—”</p><p>“The old bathhouse building, right?”</p><p>“Exactly, between those steps and the dorms, there was a trap door. I think they paved over that when I was about ten. A kid fell down there and broke many of his bones. So they shut it up, safety hazard.”</p><p>“Liability, you mean. As if they care about safety; it spurred a lawsuit, right?” </p><p>“Unfortunately yes. I was very young, as I said, but it was a nasty one. They wanted to take us orphans out of the monastery and declare it unfit for living.”</p><p>“—Money grab.”</p><p>“You sound just like your dad. Jeralt took me into his group, gave me a place to live in town, but the lawsuit displaced many others.” He peered into the last inch of his beer.</p><p>“Sorry, Alois, I didn’t mean to make you gloomy.”</p><p>“No, your big brother can handle it.”</p><p>“At least you look handsome when you brood.”</p><p>“Well said! Anyway, Professor, I don’t know what’s down there now. They boarded it up and paved over it. Whole thing could have collapsed entirely. What I remember, though, is a kind of long tunnel like a street with various rooms carved out. Offshoot tunnels, low ceilings, and I was about your height back then.”</p><p>“Is the only exit inside the monastery?”</p><p>“There was a bridge leading out from the main thoroughfare, but none of us were brave enough to take it. As I recall, water flowed under. It’s been forty years, though, so who knows if the whole place is flooded.” He lowered his voice again, “I don’t know what you’re up to, and you probably shouldn’t tell me. But if you’re in trouble, call me. It could be dangerous down there, and you know Silver Snow isn’t messing around.”</p><p>Byleth tipped her glass toward him, “Thanks a lot, Alois.”</p><p>“Wish I could give something more definite.”</p><p>“Everything you’ve said is valuable.” He nodded, and she watched his mustache droop. “Hey, Alois, will you remember me tomorrow?”</p><p>“Of course, I’ll remember you tomorrow. Is this about how much I’ve been drinking? It’s nothing like your dad.”</p><p>Byleth’s laughter was soft and sweet. A girl she had once been, a family she had once known. “Will you remember me next year?”</p><p>“Yeah, I’ll remember you next year. If you’re trying to scare me, you can’t. I have endless positivity.”</p><p>“Of course you do. Will you remember me in five years?”</p><p>“You know, Professor, I’ll remember you to the end of my days.”</p><p>“Knock knock.”</p><p>“Oh ho, who’s there?”</p><p>“Ahhhhhh, see you’ve forgotten me already!”</p><p>He laughed, the mood not leaving his eyes. “Good one.” They could almost hear the crickets on the marshes and the murmurs of dry topics between couples long together. “Cheers, By!” Alois held up his glass. “Onward to a brighter future!”</p><p> </p><p>— — —</p><p> </p><p>As soon as Byleth’s heels clicked across the metal threshold, she felt the hostile glare zeroing in on her.</p><p>“Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all Fodlan, she walks into mine…”</p><p>A man was standing in the dim glow of pendant lights hanging above the wet bar. “Felix, is that you?”</p><p>His glare wavered across her face. Simple teal chinos, black sweater, rolled sleeves, and he had clawed his hacked-off hair into a messy ponytail. This Faerghus casual was much closer to the Felix she remembered. “Hey now,” she put on a friendly voice. “How much have you had to drink? We have a planning meeting with Dimitri tomorrow.”</p><p>“You went on a date?” His eyes flashed at every d-word: drink, date, Dimitri.</p><p>Byleth shrugged. The truth was at the tip of her tongue, and somehow it wouldn’t come out. “Something wrong with that?”</p><p>“You’re already compromising our job!”</p><p>“We’ve barely been recruiting,” her tone was dismissive but her feet were moving her closer to him.</p><p>“I thought you were serious about this, By.” For a moment, his hand gripped her upper arm. Seeing his face that close was like being hit with an ice bucket. Harsh, drunk, ready to push her up against the bar. Would he step against her? Would she hear his breath in her ear?</p><p>She shivered. “I haven’t compromised any part of our job.” How many truths would she have to tell before he would believe her? “I was blowing off steam. Maybe you should too. Make sure you’re sober in the morning.”</p><p>She resisted the desire to brush against his shoulder as she stepped away.</p><p>“Leaving again—always walking away.” He wasn’t even talking to her. He was chatting with his whiskey glass, talking into the night. “We’ll always have Daphnel…”</p><p>Jeralt had once warned Byleth that it was a thief’s greatest weakness to become overly dependent on their exit strategy. She had always found it an easy lesson to overlook.</p><p>On her way to the stairs, Byleth ran headlong into Sylvain, who was bouncing down and roughing up his hair with the ghost of a grin on his lips. “Professor! I was just heading down to find Felix.”</p><p>“He’s trying to drown himself in a rocks glass. Weren’t you supposed to keep an eye on him?”</p><p>“Well, he kind of lost his shit when he heard you were out on a date.” Sylvain fixed her with a suspicious expression. “Are you sure that door’s closed?”</p><p>“He can’t even stand to be around me.”</p><p>“Ahhh, so that’s what it means when a man waits up for you. How was the date then?”</p><p><em>Waits up for you?</em> Sylvain’s words sunk in like hail on damp concrete. Was Felix waiting up for her?</p><p>“Alois? Alois was fine.”</p><p>“Your date was Alois? The guy who told dad jokes in the get-away car the whole time we were running from Silver Snow with a statue of Saint Cethleann riding bitch in the backseat.”</p><p>“I never said it was a date. You assumed,” but Sylvain’s narrowed eyes were asking exactly the right question: what game was she playing?</p><p>Up in her room, she leaned against her closed door. Despite everything, a slow smile tugged her lips. <em>He had waited up for her?</em></p><p> </p><p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>
  <span class="small">Mood board—</span>
  <br/>
  <span class="small">Felix (think Bogart, Casablanca) riding through the Badlands on a motorcycle blasting Max Richter’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LtI1PKFasME">Winter I</a>. </span>
</p><p>
  <span class="small">Cezanne thing is based on a true story.</span>
</p><p>Up Next: “A Giftshop Where a Monastery Once Stood”</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. A Giftshop Where a Monastery Once Stood</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>The backer puts some cards on the table and the crew begins their plotting. (Dimitri’s chapter.)</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em>What separates a man from a monster? If you’ve done your research, as they force you to when growing up in a Blaiddyd household, you’ll tell me it’s the brain’s executive function. People weigh options; they deliberate.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>We make decisions constantly, like breathing. We won’t even realize the majority of them. Yes, we might sit with the tough ones. Save them for quiet nights and a glass of cognac with a portrait of your father Lambert scrutinizing you from across the room.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>But, monsters do not deliberate. Their decisions snap like the heft of a lance against plated armor.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Deliberation will wear you out long before old age. Midday exhaustion? How many decisions did you make already?</em>
</p><p>
  <em>People like the Professor are unwilling to admit this, but we have a limited number of decisions we can make in a day. And good decisions? I must admit, that is a completely different story.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I wonder if we’re winding ourselves down. The executive function recovers between rests, but could it be possible that we have a limited number of decisions we can make in our lifetime? And at some point, the instincts kick in. Then, the monsters come out.</em>
</p><p> </p><p>— — —</p><p> </p><p>Dimitri rode in on the Northwind that blew Faerghus Autumn into the guest house, where the crew donned extra sweaters (or shawls in Mercie’s case) against the chill. Nonetheless, the bloodlines ran cold in Faerghus, where once a ruling family had used iron and steel to preserve the last bastion of public governance in Fodlan. So, usually, it was Byleth who shivered the most.</p><p>Dimitri brought two things with him besides his briefcase: a man from Duscur and a plethora of sore and painful conversation starters.</p><p>Duscur? Well, it was the Duscur uprising that spurred the break down of Faerghus’s governmental structures. The people of Duscur fought to reclaim their lands, only to become pawns in the broader war of privatization that dethroned the Blaiddyds.</p><p>Duscur suffered first and the hardest from the poison of private interests. Old Duscur had been a collection of villages that specialized in individual trades. One-by-one, they watched as each of their trades was quashed by the monoculture of development, and all the towns began to look the same.</p><p>The revolt hadn’t been bloodless. This ‘civilized’ modernization made casualties on either side. Dimitri’s father and step-mother, Felix’s brother.</p><p>And the people of Duscur? The more their land was developed from the outside, the further away their culture felt. They shored up the smallest, most performative aspects of their once beautiful multiplicity into spice mixes and icons of their many gods. These things were marketable, so they were the parts of themselves worth saving.</p><p>It was a case study for the economics textbooks Felix had never bothered reading in school.</p><p>Royal blue doors? Of course Dimitri’s guest houses had royal blue doors. They popped against the light gray trim that matched the gray walls and the gray city and Felix’s damnable gray mood. Loud voices bounced against the door. It was unusual for Byleth to get that worked up, but if anyone could do it, Dimitri could.</p><p>“Professor, forgive me, but you came to me with a request! I gave you a way of accomplishing it without putting yourself too deeply in debt. Watching you take risks like this, though…” Felix imagined Dimitri raising a falsely polite hand against his head. “I can’t pardon your whole crew if things go south.”</p><p>“No one here can afford for us to fail. And Adrestia has the Death Knight on their side. Who do you have watching our backs?”</p><p>Felix stepped inside the door. Neither turned to look at him.</p><p>“The Death Knight scares you? I’m surprised. I didn’t know anything frightened you.”</p><p>Byleth’s glare could have drilled holes through Dimitri’s head. Felix was glad not to be on the receiving end. It was much more gratifying to watch her charge at Dimitri.</p><p>“I’ll send you with some muscle,” he relented. “He’ll be in my hire though, my best man Dedue.”</p><p>“As long as he promises to protect every member of our crew, I don’t care who employs him.”</p><p>“That’s rather short-sighted of you, Professor.”</p><p>Byleth steadied her breath, her eyes flicked to Felix, noticing him for the first time. “You’re right, I care. But I’m trusting you, Dimitri, so I’ll trust your man. If he protects my people, we’ll take care of him in turn.”</p><p>“You know, two years ago when you ran the last job for me, I could have sworn you were trying to get yourself killed. You were downright reckless. Now you’re worried about safety?”</p><p>Byleth wasn’t looking at Felix. Dimitri was. “What are you getting at?”</p><p>“Dedue will go with you. He’s a good man, you can all trust him. The rest is up to you.”</p><p>She settled into a chair and watched Dimitri, a lone heroic figure in a country where everything was called royal-gardens-this or royal-academy-that with no remaining royalty.</p><p>Everything about him, from his satin eye-patch to his blue velvet smoking jacket and silver cuff-links, suggested that he was a man used to holding power. Power didn’t always come from money; in this world, though, it often did.</p><p>And yet, a refugee from the rat race, Dimitri was daily becoming almost as disenfranchised as the lamentable people of Duscur.</p><p> </p><p>— —</p><p>
  <em>On the anniversary of her father’s death, they sat on the cracking stonework of Garreg Mach. Byleth had jeweled the graves with flowers: white lilies for her mother, orange lilies for her father.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>As they loitered in the graveyard, Felix’s presence was offering a surprisingly strong anti-septic for Byleth’s losses. The Monastery District was a precious reprieve from the light pollution created by the resorts on the other side of the lake. They could see the stars begin to peek out.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“You grew up with Dimitri Blaiddyd?” Byleth was asking. “Heir to half of Faerghus?”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“Don’t act so surprised. Besides, I think his assets have shrunk to a mere 47 percent of Faerghus now.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“But he’s your friend?”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“We’re not friends. Though, we were almost inseparable when we were younger.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“And something came between you? A girl?”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Felix shook his head at her. “Do you think I’m that petty?” Byleth just smiled an invitation to keep talking, like he was one of her informants. How infuriating—he nipped at her ear.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“Dimitri can only think of vengeance. For Duscur, for his family, for my family. His actions have been ruthless, using his influence to strip away freedoms. He was never born free, and now there’s a snake in this country who is selling it out from under him. Perhaps your father knew about it. Whatever the case, I won’t be involved in it.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>His tone was strange, quiet. Was he really abdicating from a battle? “You think this puts us in danger, don’t you?”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“Nothing we can’t handle.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Byleth pivoted on the wall and reclined into Felix’s lap. She looked upward past the sparking amber of his eyes and the bangs that pulled rebelliously from his inky bun, into the night sky.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Felix used a finger to trace her collarbones. Twin daggers, the clavicle: sharp and protective. His focus moved upward from the stars reflected in the darkened forests of her own eyes.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“It’s all science to you, isn’t it?” he said. “Science up there, science down here, moving clockwork parts in your grand plans.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“What else would it be up there? Balls of gas and molten rocks, matter, anti-matter, dark matter, the mysteries of gravity? What else is there?”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“In the sky, I see people, history, family. The constellations of Faerghus. See there, the shield of Fraldarius. It takes thirteen stars to make our family crest; we think a lot of ourselves.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>His fingers ran down her sternum. Another blade, this one flat and wide. A killer.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“There,” he said. He pushed her head as if turning the gaze of a telescope to find the right spot. “That’s the spear of Chicol, hung on a rack beside the sword of Macuil. Above is Cethleann’s wild heart. That star at the top of her aorta—we used to find our way home by it. See this path winding through it all? We called it the Sword of the Creator, a bladed whip that binds together all our legends.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Byleth could almost see it scrolling across the sky. History where the human faces overrode the machinations of cause and effect. People above and people below. He was cursed to see people as people, even when he didn’t want to. It was one of the world’s most beautiful injustices.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“Felix, I didn’t—”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“Look who’s holding the sword there. The Enlightened One, he was a mastermind, like yourself. I would have loved to challenge him to a duel.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Felix didn’t speak often of Faerghus’s legends. They were foolish; nationalist propaganda liable to do more harm than good. And yet, all of it, the chivalry, the decency, the need to protect a complex ecosystem, was hardwired into him.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>The sky shined with the intensity of Felix’s centripetal considerations. The stars blazed with the ardency of Byleth’s centrifugal schemes. With his pull inward and her push outward, they could create a black hole all their own.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Byleth looked into the bright seas of the night sky and dreamed of a singularity where she and Felix could exist. Time would mean nothing. They would float in space, making punching pass after punching pass at each other until their arms entangled. Only their blood to keep them warm. Beyond the event horizon, she dreamed of an eternity with the only motherfucker in the entire cosmos who could handle her.</em>
</p><p>— — </p><p> </p><p>Byleth shook herself out of the memory to see Felix standing a foot away from Dimitri and pointing his finger into the tall man’s chest, teeth clenched all to hell. For his part, Dimitri was still looking at Felix like he had found the prodigal son.</p><p>He was a large man. His presence was like Jupiter in the room. And like Jupiter, Dimitri’s gravitational pull on his friends could create enough friction to keep a moon in the deep reaches of space from freezing entirely below its icy surface. And there be cryptids. Cryptids like the anger that flairs up so easily in Felix whenever he talks to Dimitri.</p><p>“I don’t want your blood money!” Felix was spitting, and Dimitri’s one eye was growing more slanted and peevish the longer he had to take the high road.</p><p>“Your father earned it. I would have transferred Rodrigue’s pension to you after the funeral but since you left, I—”</p><p>“I left for a reason.”</p><p>“You never gave me a chance to tell you how sorry I was. How sorry I am.”</p><p>Byleth rose and put a hand on Felix’s shoulder. It was a testament to how much he hated Dimitri that he didn’t shake her away. Instead, he let her draw him backward.</p><p>“Save your apologies. Would you like my blood too, boar?” Felix’s disaffected eyes roved as he pulled Byleth’s hand off his shoulder. “I can cut my chest right now and spill it for you.”</p><p>“No, that’s not what I want at all. I want us to talk like we used to.”</p><p>“It seems like everyone wants to bring up the past. Am I the only one who made a future for myself?” A face of pale porcelain, kiln-fired and uncrackable.</p><p>“Have you then? What sort of future? I want to know about it, Felix.”</p><p>He had said it so many times, that he was making a future, that he was cutting his own way. No one had ever tried to nail him to it, though. No one asked what that future entailed.</p><p>Dimitri’s single eye peered through his bedraggled ‘90s rocker hair. He smiled. It looked painful.</p><p>“Why am I here? If you and <em>the Professor</em> want to start a war across the continent, why bring me into it?”</p><p>The body language wasn’t difficult to parse: Dimitri’s broad shoulders were leaning forward as a suppliant; Felix’s hip was tilted back, ready to strike; Byleth was hovering with her hands raised, either about to bang their heads together or draw them into an ill-advised group hug.</p><p>“The Professor was concerned for your safety. More than that, she has theories about your father that you might be interested to hear.”</p><p>Byleth shook her head. Out of anyone making a case to Felix on her behalf, did it have to be Dimitri?</p><p> </p><p>— — —</p><p> </p><p>While the Professor had been in Adrestia to collect Felix, Ingrid and Sylvain went for a walk-through of Mach City.</p><p>Anyone who had seen Garreg Mach twenty years ago would have known a city about to fall. It was too beautiful. Its residents liked it too much.</p><p>While the mountains that surrounded the castle-like monastery saved it from urban sprawl, the urban compression caused a steep rollercoaster of property values. And that cute town in the mountains had quickly become the overvalued property of a few landlords.</p><p>The first thing they encountered at the front entrance of Garreg Mach’s Monastery District was a ticket booth. Sylvain and Ingrid bought their exhibit tickets in person. They were the only ones who paid cash.</p><p>One step into the galleria, and it’s all modern: digital galleries, VR art experiences, bright murals climbing up the sides of walls that had been replastered a dozen times.</p><p>In the old days, it had been Garreg Mach’s history that drew in its various denizens. Smart-thinking iconoclasts coexisted with the decaying church of Seiros. As capital rooted into the town, though, the revolutionaries were pushed to the outskirts and, later, from the city altogether. Overnight the town became dreadfully boring, and no one seemed to notice.</p><p>Sudden loss brings a slowly creeping realization. One day the streets frolicked with a discussion of ideas and customs; the next day, those ideas and customs were exiled from silver-plated renovations as the city turned rent into their favorite cash-crop.</p><p>Oh, Mach City still talked about itself as if all the old beats were still there. But when the residents finished each busy-busy-busy day of their busy-busy-busy lives, the new people of Garreg Mach would go out looking for the old fun and find it gone.</p><p>“Did you expect it to be this modern?” Sylvain whispered to Ingrid, as they walked through a gleaming hall colored by non-representational stained-glass ceilings. Through a door to the left, they could hear the clanging of a dining area.</p><p>“Yes,” Ingrid pulled a pamphlet from her leather backpack and handed it across. “I read the gallery highlights.” Next, she pulled out a small reporter’s pad and a pen. She stuck the pen behind her ear, tucked beside a sensible ponytail, and spun around the hall in her leather boots.</p><p>“You make a good student,” Sylvain said, as he peered past the pamphlet to where she gazed her awe at every corner of the gallery. He tugged at his jeans and flamboyantly checkered shirt while Ingrid drew a rough map into the notebook. She designated the help desk and security point for orientation, then she made a star for the location of each security camera.</p><p>“Where to next?” she tugged the map back from him.</p><p>“There are three main galleries: Faerghan, Adrestian, and Leicestrian. I doubt it will be in any of those, though.”</p><p>“We’ll go by them. Byleth needs us to check out the old dorms anyway.” Ingrid flipped in her notebook to a page with some of Byleth’s notation, including a map into which she had sketched key spots that she needed them to photograph.</p><p>They walked through every gallery, looking for religious art, but their search turned up empty.</p><p>“Nowhere else besides the Cathedral.”</p><p>The line across the Cathedral bridge was unreal, packed body to body with guards winding through to warn tourists of the potential wait.</p><p>“This doesn’t look good.”</p><p>“I guess we’re waiting in line, low profile and all that.”</p><p>Ingrid read the local news leaflet that had come with the monastery’s informational pamphlets:</p><p>
  <em>“OLD GARREG MACH NEIGHBORHOOD FRUSTRATED BY THE PRESENCE OF MERCENARIES: Some neighborhoods of Garreg Mach report the presence of mercenaries hired by the Silver Snow. These strangers kill morale, not to mention scaring residents’ pets. One resident told us, “I just want to take my dog out to piss without running into someone armed to the teeth. Who wants to steal history anyway? It’s history! It’s over, isn’t it?”</em>
  <br/>
  <em>—The Daily Macher</em>
</p><p>Meanwhile, Sylvain checked Microblogger and scrolled through the local tags:</p><p>
  <em>“I used to love Mach City, but now it’s run by a she-dragon who dgaf what happens to us citizens.” —@flowers4gatekeeper</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“There’s literally nowhere more perfect than G.Mach in spring!! they’re planning me the perfect mayqueen wedding. we’ll liveblog it all ofc xoxo” —@futurevonhellman</em>
</p><p>When finally they were allowed into the Cathedral exhibit, they ran their eyes over more forgeries than originals. Each fake painting was purposefully passed off for an original that should have been in the monastery’s holding.</p><p>“Where do you think the real stuff is?” Ingrid asked. When even she could spot the fakes, you knew it was bad.</p><p>“Vaults, I reckon. There’s a whole Cathedral beyond this wall that we can’t get into.”</p><p>“The question is, how do we gain access to it? Here, Sylvain, sketch as much as you can.” Ingrid shoved a sketchbook into Sylvain’s hands while barely concealing a pair of knuckle gloves that had tried to pop out of the little backpack. “Byleth needs to see all of this.”</p><p>“Fine, fine, but only if you agree to race me home.”</p><p>“Deal.” A race wasn’t a hard sale. Ingrid lived for the wind in her hair and the disappointed frown Sylvain made when she beat him every time.</p><p> </p><p>— — —</p><p> </p><p>The guest house was furnished in artisanal antiques. It was the rare stuff, furniture from before Fodlan relied on mass production. That didn’t stop Byleth’s pack of criminals from lounging sideways in the armchairs, putting their feet on the upholstered ottomans, and snacking on Mercedes’ berry tarts without plates.</p><p><em>Truly savages</em>, as Felix had put it when he stalked out of the room all of thirty seconds after Dimitri had entered it.</p><p>“From the intel that Sylvain and Ingrid brought back, we can confirm that Garreg Mach monastery has hired new tech and web security,” Byleth was saying as she pulled an indicatively empty folder out of a portfolio.</p><p>“Do we have a name, a handle, anything?” Annie asked, assuming a crouched stance over her computer.</p><p>“Lysethia von Ordelia. Have you heard anything about her?”</p><p>“Looking her up now,” Annie said before starting her preliminary probing. It was hard to say whether Annie was a white-hat hacker or a black-hat hacker. Most of the time, it seemed that her hat was checkered like a chessboard. As long as she was an expert, Byleth didn’t care one way or another.</p><p>Mercedes came around with the tray of bite-size cranberry tarts. Though Dimitri waved her off, she perked up a smile when Dedue took one. The little tart was dainty between his large fingers, and yet they were so gentle there was no fear of cracking the pâté sucrée shell.</p><p>“There’s nothing. She’s a ghost, web presence on lockdown.” As far as the internet, the Whispernet, the darknet was concerned, Lysethia von Ordelia simply did not exist.</p><p>“Are you a ghost like that Annie?”</p><p>“I keep my accounts pretty tight. Not like this, though.”</p><p>Mercedes brought another tart by Dedue. He took it gently, smiling slightly.</p><p>Dedue wasn’t your average muscle, despite his above-average muscles. Aside from his position as Dimitri’s body-guard, he had no background in special ops or the armed forces. He was a refugee from a small village in Duscur. You won’t know much about it. Maybe, though, if you like your food, you’ll recall a Duscur town renowned for its mycological produce. We’re talking fungi, we’re talking high-end pure umami mushrooms. That’s where Dedue grew up.</p><p>Like any good mycologist, his eyes were often turned downward to the ground. Mushrooms had been the bread of life: hen of the woods, earthy chanterelle, slimy oysters wrapping their fans around the trees that grow by the river, button-top cremini, and those absolute jewels left unvaulted on the forest floors, morels.</p><p>Dedue rarely wanted anything for himself. However, if you pressed him—and you would really have to put on the pressure—to express one selfish desire, it would be to rent a pig and go truffle-hunting. Black truffles from the chestnut and oak forests of Aegir, white truffles from the groves of Riegan. Because mushrooms were home. His sister once cooked with them; his whole village once smelled of them. Few men delighted more in rhizome root structures.</p><p>And ever since he had volunteered to cook them dinner that night, Mercedes had begun buttering him up.</p><p>“Well, shit. Shit, fuck, shit! Well, sorry Professor, sorry, shit.”</p><p>“What is it, Annie?” Byleth’s voice: calm. Annie’s eyes: panicked.</p><p>“She found me. This girl isn’t some script-kiddie—she’s the real deal. Shit, I didn’t even know I had an opening there. Shit, fuck.”</p><p>Byleth had never even considered the possibility that Annie’s computer could be vulnerable. “Is she probing? Close down our server!”</p><p>“Naturally, but she’s already out. It was just a warning. I’m checking to see if she left a backdoor.”</p><p>Just then, Annie’s phone started buzzing. Notification after notification scrolled across its glass surface. They stacked on top of each other, making room for more to scroll.</p><p>“What’s that?”</p><p>“Bots,” Annie grimaced. “She sent a horde of bots after my social media accounts. Another warning and a really annoying one. She knows who I am. Good thing this VPN locates us in Adrestia. She knows nothing about us, just that I was poking for her.”</p><p>Byleth nodded. “So we’ve been warned. This Lysethia sounds slippery. Do you think she’ll keep you from being able to access Garreg Mach’s security?”</p><p>“Oh, I’ll figure it out alright. Just give me time.”</p><p>Byleth nodded her confidence. “Where’s Felix?” she asked, “We still have planning to do.” She walked out of the room.</p><p>“‘Where’s Felix?’” Sylvain said, mimicking Byleth’s voice. “What are the odds on those two getting back together by the end of this job?”</p><p>“I’ve been rooting for them since day one. You’re not going to get me to bet against them.” Annette spoke grouchily, still absorbed in damage control from her brush against the other hacker. To begin with, she was writing a script to autoblock all the bots now crowding her notifications.</p><p>“No chance.” Ingrid said, “Felix is stubborn.”</p><p>“Byleth is stubborn too.”</p><p>“What do you think, new kid?” Ingrid asked. By now, she and Ashe were thick as thieves, purely from the shared experience of liking the same books.</p><p>“I don’t really know Byleth,” Ashe began tentatively, “but I’ve never seen Felix hung up on someone before.”</p><p>“Until now?” Sylvain asked. Ashe just smiled and stuck his head back into the red leather book he was reading.</p><p>“Byleth is dating,” Ingrid pointed out. “She’s moved on.”</p><p>“You wanna bet?” Sylvain’s knowing smile was almost too much. He would have let Ingrid in on the secret, but she was already too riled up to listen to him.</p><p>“Alright, Sylvain,” she sat up, back arrow-straight. “I’ll take that action. If Byleth and Felix get back together by the end of this job, you win. If not, I win. Spoilers though: You’re going to lose.”</p><p>“And what are we wagering?”</p><p>“Five percent of our earnings.”</p><p>Mercedes almost dropped the tray of tarts. Ashe’s eyes were large as moons over the horizon of the book. Annie whistled. Sylvain, for once, was silent.</p><p>Dimitri’s brows raised in arcs before falling again. One shrank back unsettlingly half-way under the eyepatch.</p><p>“Something on your mind, your highness?” Sylvain asked.</p><p>“I happen to have it on good authority that Felix doesn’t forgive easily.”</p><p>Ingrid looked smug. “Thank you, your highness. I’m glad you agree.”</p><p>“I think you’re both underestimating an important variable here.”</p><p>“And what’s that, Sylvain?”</p><p>“Byleth is very hot. So I’m going to accept—five percent of our earnings that they’re together by the end of the job.” They shook on it.</p><p>Ingrid wasted no time putting the wager in writing. Sylvain wasted a lot of time making sure that the terms of the wager were rendered in perfect calligraphy.</p><p>“So that’s what you want to do with your share of the money, Sylvain?” Dimitri asked as Sylvain screwed the cap back on a bottle of ink. “Bet on whether or not your friends fall in love?”</p><p>“Oh, I have other ideas too. A good girl, a good place, and staying far out of this war you and Byleth are stirring up.”</p><p>Dimitri turned his face away from his old friend. Any line that crossed it could give him away.</p><p>“So you are trying to start something?”</p><p>“We all want a better world for our future.”</p><p>“All for our future, huh? What about our present, Dimitri?”</p><p>“In the present, give her two weeks and Byleth will have you throwing money like confetti. Escape to the mountains if you want. I can’t blame whatever you choose to do. After this heist, you’ll already have done your part.”</p><p>“What are you and Byleth planning?”</p><p>“I don’t plan. You must know that about me. But I’m not going to stand by and watch some slithering bastards tear apart my country for their own gain.”</p><p>Ingrid raised her eyebrows and made a gesture at Sylvain to drop it.</p><p> </p><p>— — —</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>Decision-making and planning are two different uses of the executive function. We make decisions from facts and events. To plan, though, we must speculate, and speculation is the most dangerous.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I have never been one for intricate plans. According to my once-laughing, now-deceased father, that’s the sort of work that you hire people for. I suppose that I have followed in his footsteps with friends and advisors for the careful plots.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I do know this, though: as noble and far-reaching as you may think you’re being, the central kernel of a plan is always personal. Have I, Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd, ever created a backup plan?</em>
  <br/>
  
  <br/>
  <em>No. Sometimes we must appeal to the better monsters of our nature.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I go all-in from the beginning. When you know what you want, the only way forward is to keep it in your crosshairs.</em>
</p><p> </p><p>— — —</p><p> </p><p>“Ultimately,” Byleth was pacing before the glass wall where she had drawn diagrams of the Cathedral, “the best way to get into a secure location is to give ourselves a reason to be there. We exploit a public vulnerability.”</p><p>“The suspense is killing us, Professor,” paradoxically, Sylvain looked like he had never experienced suspense in his life. “Just unveil the plan already.”</p><p>“Garreg Mach’s biggest weakness is its wedding industry. All we have to do to get inside is plan a wedding.” Byleth drew a stick-figure bride and groom in front of the Cathedral altar.</p><p>Sylvain laughed. “You have to be kidding me, Professor! So who’s getting married?”</p><p>“I’m not kidding. No one is ‘getting married’. It’s a farce. We have a couple schedule a wedding. They pretend to be picky about their venue, overly particular about the wedding arrangements, and suddenly they and their most important guests have access to the Monastery District, the Cathedral, and everything else.”</p><p>“It could work,” Felix said, scowling at her, “But even if we had a registered couple, there’s no way they would have clearance to the vaults and the deeper galleries.”</p><p>“That’s why we make sure that the betrothed couple are meddlesome. It’s casing the joint: they have to poke around and know what to look for.”</p><p>“I’ll do it!” Annie said, waving her hand around in the air. “I’ve always loved wedding planning.”</p><p>“Shouldn’t you be on surveillance?” Ingrid asked.</p><p>“Ingrid’s right, we need you out in the van recording everything through bodycams.”</p><p>“Then you should do it, Mercie,” Annie said.</p><p>“No…” Byleth said slowly. By then she had written all their names on the glass wall and was marking out where they needed to be. “I think we need Mercedes and Dedue to examine the cave system below Garreg Mach, our escape route.”</p><p>“What do you say, Ingrid? You and me?” Sylvain winked. </p><p>Ingrid stared thunderously at Byleth.</p><p>“That’s a thought,” Byleth twirled the marker as she considered it. “You guys are quick on your feet and I do want you there in the cathedral.”</p><p>“But?”</p><p>“But rather than being the ones meddling, I think you’ll be much better at providing distractions and smoothing over the trouble that the curious wedding couple makes.” Byleth was looking to Ingrid for this one. “Basically, you’re the talkers. The wedding couple won’t have to talk much, they just need to be observant.</p><p>“Ashe is observant…” she was talking to herself now as she paced. “But he’s too nervous, he’ll crumble if they start poking at his story.” Annie shot apologetic eyes at Ashe as if to say, <em>sometimes she gets like this, don’t take it personally</em>. Ashe, though, just looked relieved. “He should be free to poke around, no one notices him. So that leaves—”</p><p>“Oh, you’ve noticed, Professor,” Felix was trying to set her on fire with his eyes.</p><p>“You and me.” He was shaking his head. “It makes sense too.” She began speaking more quickly with that rush of excitement that she always felt when a plan was coming together. “You’re the burglar that has to get us through to the chalice, and no one’s better at casing a joint than I am.” She drew a line between them on the wall. “You’re not afraid to do some acting, are you?”</p><p>If looks could kill, Byleth would have been pinned to the wall with throwing knives while she awaited the longsword aimed for her heart. As far as she knew, Felix’s glares couldn’t wound her physically. He did, however, manage to make her feel smaller than the lowliest microbe.</p><p>Should she have gotten down on one knee?</p><p> </p><p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>
  <span class="small">Byleth: pretend to marry me. for the <em>cause</em>.</span>
  <br/>
  <span class="small">Camera pans to Ingrid and Sylvain—a game is afoot.</span>
</p><p>  <span class="small">Thanks for the comments and support for this story! Hearing from you gives me so much energy for each chapter!</span></p><p>Up Next: "A Liar Knows a Lie"</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. A Liar Knows a Lie</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>In the new Mach City HQ, Byleth forces everybody to perform trust exercises as they come to terms with what might be at stake in this job. (Ingrid’s chapter.)</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em>In the time it takes to ride from Blaiddyd City to Garreg Mach, I could read through a corner of the library. The trip isn’t so bad when I have something to listen to. Then it’s just the road stretching out, wind tugging my hair more sensually than any lover I’ve ever had, and Sylvain beside me, trying to wink and almost swerving off the shoulder.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>On this trip, I was listening to an audiobook about a group of thieves who stole memories. One of those derivative Jungian heist stories that get all cerebral to try to distract you from the plot-holes.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>The thing is, they’re not all wrong. Try to overstate how important memories are to us, and you’ll end up eating your words as soon as you begin. Without memory, you can’t even talk. What are we made of? Memories. We learn things and they become? Memories. Lawyered.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Take, for instance, laws. I gave up dreaming about knights and fantasy to learn laws that barely hold jurisdiction beyond a few square miles. Thinking about it sometimes, I feel the old Ingrid slip away. There she goes, floating off on her motorcycle, and what am I left with?</em>
</p><p>
  <em>But here’s the redemptive part. The more laws you know, the more creative you can be when it’s time to make them up.</em>
</p><p> </p><p>— — —</p><p> </p><p>A  good hideout should fly under the radar while still being an innocuous part of the city. Byleth was always a touch dramatic with her selections. For instance, most locals assumed that their Mach City headquarters was a co-op of drugged-out artistic types. You know, deadbeats. A relic from the city’s revolutionary days, the house leaned on bowing stilts that noticeably shifted when the mountains sent the harsh winds to raid the town.</p><p>Byleth had cleared one wall of their new hideout for a blackboard and left the rest a junkyard. On the blackboard, she wrote,</p><p><strong>The Jurisdiction</strong>: Mach City<br/>
<strong>The Crime</strong>: Grand Larceny in the First Degree (felony)<br/>
<strong>The Mark</strong>: the Chalice of Beginnings<br/>
<strong>Minimum Sentence</strong>: 50 years incarceration</p><p>As if taking the crew on a field trip through an archaeological site, she pulled them into a headquarters that was a labyrinth of broken-down couches with obscure stains, a kitchen with a freezer full of peas, mousetraps in every corner, one massive half-feral barn cat on the prowl, and several grungy rooms with dubious hand-painted murals marring the walls.</p><p>The bathrooms were dank with black mold, the kitchen was full of dull knives that Felix immediately took to sharpening, and the living room smelled like a century-old ashtray. A downgrade from Dimitri Blaiddyd’s guest house. Yet, for the first time, their digs had the atmosphere of a den for thieves, and this job was beginning to feel serious.</p><p>Byleth walked them through the space. Annie’s tech headquarters would go in a sunroom near the entrance. They would set up Sylvain’s craft station by the window for proper fume ventilation.</p><p>“What do you think?” Byleth waved her hand over every image of the Chalice of Beginnings known to man, all spread across a table marked by more round water stains than it had square inches.</p><p>“I suppose I can work with this.” Sylvain crossed his arms in thought. “I’ll have to fake many of these materials unless Dimitri’s putting up the capital for gemstones.”</p><p>“Fake it all.”</p><p>Even perfect dupes of legendary artwork are barely worth their parts and labor, unless you’re trying to pass them off. Meanwhile, the original can buy whole countries. It’s called the aura of history, some immaterial patina given to old objects by time. It’s seen a few wars, and that makes it more expensive. Why even bother with an exact replica if you’re just locking it in a vault?</p><p>“Look, By, no offense to our digs here, but high-quality goblet-crafting isn’t something you usually do in a roach hole like this. I need it to be clean.”</p><p>And that’s how the cleaning frenzy began.</p><p>Maid service can refer to the steps a thief takes to leave no trace: wiping blood, removing fingerprints, erasing the digital footprint. The ideal heist looks like it never happened. So what do you do? You develop a skill most people don’t know thieves have. You get very good at cleaning.</p><p>Mercedes was a sorter, Ingrid a tidier, Annette a disinfecter. Ashe worked methodically, layer by layer. Byleth threw everything out in the garbage. Felix tended to choose a spot and pick at it until it was meticulous. Sylvain organized, and Dedue plunged his hands in the dirty work.</p><p>“The crime is Grand Larceny of the First Degree,” Byleth lectured as they worked. All eyes snapped to her, whether they were covered in dust bunnies or filtering through moldering fridge contents.</p><p>“That’s all? It doesn’t sound like enough,” Sylvain asked shuffling his reference photos into a neat pile.</p><p>“Grand larceny of a sacred relic that dates back longer than the monastery itself. With no additional charges, we’re looking at fifty years in Mach City prisons. Once we pull a weapon, it elevates to armed robbery.” She made a gesture like swiping a knife across her throat.</p><p>Someone whistled, and it wasn’t from the joy of cleaning.</p><p>From Fodlan’s secularization a patchwork of independent cities had emerged, each with a different legal system. Mach City’s legal system, as the place hit hardest by the secularization, went for the kneecaps every time. Sentences were long and harsh, and it didn’t take much to get stuck with them.</p><p>“These are the laws of Mach City. We won’t follow them, but we do have to know them. Ingrid, fill us in.”</p><p>When every city had different codes and legal structures, studying law in Fodlan was more about rhetoric than it was hard and fast memorization. Ingrid knew how to do both. She had spun tales on the law room floor that had gotten the wildest counterfeit paintings a pardon. Sometimes, though, even her hands were tied.</p><p>“Your rights are simple,” Ingrid said. “You will have no bargaining chips, and the first thing Silver Snow will try to do in their prosecution is offer a deal to sell the rest of us out. Don’t take any deals; they won’t be honored.”</p><p>Ingrid wrote a complicated web of Mach City’s sentencing formulas on the blackboard while Byleth swept ants, nest and all, into a dustpan.</p><p>“So when I say simple, what I mean is: if we get caught, we’re as good as fucked.”</p><p>“So what’s the plan?” Annette rinsed her scouring pad in a murky bucket of white vinegar.</p><p>“Don’t get caught.” Sylvain kicked aside a full trash bag and started to fill another one.</p><p>“Yeah, yeah. But what’s the backup plan?”</p><p>Byleth had only one card up her sleeve and it was a grim one. Her silence left a gap in the air.</p><p>Ingrid stepped around a half-sorted pile of tools, scattering screwdrivers, sand-paper, and dremel bits at her feet. “Each of us would be charged with Criminal Conspiracy and as an Accessory to Grand Larceny. In addition, I would add fraud, money laundering from our shell company, and potential perjury. I’d serve eighty years in prison.” She sat below the chalkboard and went back to sorting.</p><p>Byleth watched the smirks melt from her crew members.</p><p>“So… if I’m caught,” Sylvain said from behind a pile of old cassette tapes. “Just like everyone else in my life, they’ll tell me I’m a fraud. Then there’ll be indecent exposure, and most importantly criminal forgery of a priceless relic. 100 years in prison. Beat that,” he shot Felix a look.</p><p>“Indecent exposure?” Felix asked, revealing that he had been paying attention the whole time. “What the hell are you planning?”</p><p>“You know it’s gonna happen one way or another,” Sylvain winked.</p><p>The kitchen floor was so soaked from Dedue’s navy-style mopping techniques, it reflected his face in the dim light. “I’ll be charged with armed robbery and aggravated assault. 65 years in prison.”</p><p>“You won’t be charged with anything,” Felix’s voice snapped like a wet towel across the room. “The Boar will get you off of everything.”</p><p>He was clearing a coffee table of refuse, removing old magazines, wine bottles that had become ashtrays full to the bend with cigarette butts, a kit labeled ‘First Aid’ containing syringes, yellowing powder, a spoon and a lighter, as well as the remnants of an old bookie’s ledger.</p><p>“Identity theft and fraud, according to your plan,” he shot Byleth a look. “Petty larceny and burglary. And if I have to see Sylvain naked in public again, public drunkenness to forget the pain. 105 years.” He scowled at Sylvain.</p><p>“These numbers aren’t bragging rights. This is our future we’re gambling.” Ingrid had a sooty streak across her forehead. They would all deserve showers after this. Cleaning the bathroom would fall to her, Byleth guessed, ready to take that one for the team.</p><p>Annette’s fingers were wrinkled from scrubbing and they burned from using chemicals on the tougher spots. “I’ve got cybercrimes, improperly accessed computer networks, the best criminal encryption they’ll ever see, identity theft, and let’s be real, reckless driving. I can only hope for 90 years.”</p><p>Mercedes’ dress stirred up clouds of dirt that she had been loosening from the floorboards while sweeping. “Possession of explosives, destruction of public property, arson, let’s hope I don’t have to practice medicine without a license, and possession of narcotics. 120 years.”</p><p>Ashe was beginning to put the hideout back together. A coffee table with the laminate now sparkling, a couch with the cushions beat until they stopped coughing up dust, chairs that had been vacuumed of all particles and smelled slightly of lemon. It almost looked livable. “I will have committed grand larceny in the first degree. 95 years in Mach City prison.”</p><p>“It’s your turn, Professor,” Ingrid prodded gently, knowing already what Byleth needed to say. At first, Byleth didn’t respond. She just kept throwing old magazines into a trash bag. “Professor?”</p><p>Byleth’s face was the blankest thing in the room. She looked around at her crew members, each of them willing to take on a behemoth of a task that could imprison them for the rest of their lives. It was time for her to show her card: the Queen of Spades at the gallows.</p><p>“If caught…” she said, “I will be charged with conspiracy and burglary,” her gaze flitted to Ashe. “Arson and destruction of public property,” her head turned in Mercie’s direction, “aggravated assault,” her eyes shifted to Dedue. “Cybercrime” she looked at Annette and then up at the ceiling. The remaining charges came rattling out of her mouth in a rote list, “Disturbing the peace, forgery, fraud, identity theft, perjury, petty larceny, and grand larceny of a sacred artifact.”</p><p>“What the fuck?” In the diffused light from the dusty bulbs, Felix’s eyes looked almost red.</p><p>“They won’t keep me in prison, it’ll be capital punishment or handing me off to Edelgard. But it’s the kind of deal that can get you all off the hook.” She looked at Ingrid, holder of the law. “And I’ll make sure no one of you exists in any private or public records inside Mach City.”</p><p>Annette’s brillo pad stopped scratching across the coffee table. Dedue’s mop wasn’t slurping on the floor anymore. Ashe was staring open-mouthed, as the implications expanded like gas throughout the muffled hideout. Sylvain whistled, “She’s right, if they check-mate the Professor, they’ll leave the rest of us alone.” </p><p>Felix looked livid, “Just to be clear, they’ll assassinate—”</p><p>“That’s enough. It’s only logical. We’re each looking at a lifetime in jail: one life for seven. Time to break for lunch. Everyone wash your hands really well, there’s no telling where this place has been or who’s been living in it.”</p><p> </p><p>— — —</p><p> </p><p>One side-effect of being in a clandestine crew is that you have nothing else to do but spend your off-time getting to know each other. External contact is limited. Let one thing slip, and you’ll be black-balled all the way to Neptune.</p><p>What’s there to do? Crowd out your friendly hacker’s monitor setup to watch movies? Check. Play games? Well, when were they not playing games. Get drunk and divulge secrets? It was only a matter of time.</p><p>“Trust exercises,” Byleth suggested. “The more we pair up, the more important it is to have each other’s backs. Trust means we don’t sell each other out.”</p><p>Trust. The word buzzed through the room like a housefly. Ingrid half-expected Felix to get up with a wet hand-towel and start snapping at the air. It’s effective for killing flies, why not trust?</p><p>But Byleth did what Byleth always does. As if cuddling the fly and affectionately naming it Beezlebub weren’t enough, she assigned someone else to take care of it, feed it, walk it, and make sure it didn’t kill anybody. That is to say, when the Professor started talking about trust, it was all of their problem.</p><p>The games began. Trust exercises were just as well black-mail exercises. Information is ambivalent; it can be used to make someone more endearing and it can also be used to tear them down utterly. For criminals planning the kind of heist that could land them each in prison for multiple life sentences, two-truths-and-a-lie was even more dangerous than a flipped poker table.</p><p>Sylvain measured wires to create a frame for the chalice. “It’s easy, just another game, right?” He looked at Felix who wasn’t meeting his eyes. “One, I have never cheated at cards. Two, I still cry about my poor dead brother, even though he made a terrible kingpin and his cocaine was shit. Three,” he beckoned Felix closer as if getting ready to whisper. Felix took the bait, and he knelt beside Sylvain. Then, in the same loud voice, Sylvain said, “I think <em>you</em> should be more forgiving.”</p><p>Felix made a <em>hmphing</em> sound and punched Sylvain in the shoulder before walking away.</p><p>“What?” Sylvain couldn’t keep the grin off his face. “Is it something I said?”</p><p>“It’s not all just two-truths-and-a-lie,” Byleth spoke from a corner where she was trashing decades-old catalogs. “Try out blind-fold exercises and trust falls.” She crossed to the sunroom where Annie was installing her computer rig. “What’s going on here?”</p><p>Ashe was blindfolded, broom in hand and sweeping, while Annette was connecting wires on a freshly disinfected card table. She shouted directions to him as if keying them into the command line of a computer.</p><p>“It’s a trust game. See, Ashe trusts me to direct him while he cleans.”</p><p>“There’s no need to shout,” Byleth said rubbing her head. “He can still hear you while blindfolded. Besides, Ashe is a burglar with off-the-charts spatial awareness. He’s not using your directions at all.”</p><p>“Is that true?” Annie asked, looking at the blindfolded man who nodded and continued to sweep perfectly even though Annette had ceased her directions. “Now I feel betrayed. I thought we were building trust.”</p><p>“I appreciate that you trusted me with your directions.” Ashe smiled and raised his blindfold to reveal those bright green eyes all full of mischief.</p><p>“Here,” Byleth handed him a thick catalog, bent back on itself and opened to a page that showed a large vault with a complicated dial. “This is from Zolton industries. Look through it to get a sense of the safes and vaults they’re producing.”</p><p>He flipped it between his hands. “This catalog is six years out of date, and it doesn’t say anything about their mechanisms. Professor, the entire catalog is online. Not to mention, I have two siblings who are engineers for Zoltan industries. If I get one of their passwords, we can access Zolton’s database to get more information.”</p><p>Byleth’s mouth dropped open. “You have contacts in Zoltan industries?” Behind her, Felix was towing a freshly cleaned and aired out rug back into the house.</p><p>“Yeah, they help me get Felix a birthday present from there every year.” Felix pulled a Zoltan trick blade from his pocket and began twirling it around his finger. Byleth ignored how his hair drifted back while he tilted his head as if to say, <em>Ashe gave him birthday presents; what did Byleth ever do for Felix’s birthday?</em></p><p>“You never thought to tell me?” Byleth turned back to Ashe.</p><p>“He’s telling you now.” Felix flicked hair out of his eyes. “Consider it a trust exercise.”</p><p>“With a model number, could they send you the exact mechanisms for practicing?” </p><p>“I—I think so. They’ve sent me stuff before.”</p><p>“Jeeze, Professor,” Annette turned around in a swivel chair that she had dug up from who-knows-where, “you didn’t even ask their names.” Byleth didn’t know the names of any of their living family. It was safer that way.</p><p>She retreated toward the desk where Ingrid was working on the wedding paperwork. “I have one,” Felix said, following her. “How about a trust punch? Stand there and trust that I won’t hit you.”</p><p>Byleth halted with him in the hall between the entrance room and the larger living space, from which they could hear the hubbub of the rest of the crew. With two fingers, she gestured him closer. “Try me.”</p><p>He wound up in front of her, fist raised comically high. How gratifying it would be to actually punch her. He lunged toward her in a diagonal, aiming to swing past her face, but all of her sparring instincts caused her to jump back out of the way.</p><p>“You dodged!” Her face was almost as shocked as his. “You don’t trust me.”</p><p>Her mind was a mouse running a wheel. For weeks now, she had been so focused on winning him back that she never stopped to wonder how she felt about him. Was she willing to bet on him? Or did she simply have a death wish as Dimitri suggested?</p><p>Felix was watching her face like he could read her thoughts. Who knew distrust went both ways?</p><p>“My turn.” Byleth wound up her fist, and Felix steeled himself. He was going to take the punch no matter what. This wasn’t about trust, anymore; it was about stubbornness.</p><p>She made it look like she was swinging, and then she leaned in to kiss him on the cheek. For a moment, she lost her balance, making it a harder kiss than she had intended.</p><p>His face scrunched and sputtered. His hiss and yowl could be heard all the way to the top of the house where it startled the barn cat down from his mouse-haven attic. “What the hell?”</p><p>“Trust punch,” Byleth said, deadpan immaculate.</p><p>Felix stomped off rubbing the side of his face as if she’d actually hit him. He found a gleeful Sylvain beside an annoyed Ingrid who was altogether too willing to side with him that Byleth had been completely inappropriate.</p><p>While they talked, Ingrid drew up the paperwork. Pre-nuptials were her specialty. They might have looked like overkill, but every couple who had the cash-flow to get married at Garreg Mach had them. She made fake birth certificates, Personal ID cards, and, of course, the license. As far as paperwork went, their believability would be on point.</p><p>When it came to the human element, though, they had a long way to go.</p><p>“What a brilliant plan,” came Felix’s sardonic drawl, as Ingrid lined him up against the only pure white wall-space they had to take his ID photo.</p><p>Byleth almost had it in her to ignore his snark. “Stop grumbling. You’re a diplomatic nightmare, and I’m not letting you out of my sight. At least with me, you’re just my nightmare.”</p><p>Felix grunted and examined his new birth certificate. “Paul Clyde from Daphnel? Is this for real, Ingrid?”</p><p>He began eyeing the certificate Ingrid had pressed into Byleth’s hand. “Time to start calling me Bonnie,” she laughed. “Can I call you Paulie? It’s kind of cute.”</p><p>“No, no nicknames! Whose idea was this?” Sylvain cheekily raised his hand. “Bonnie and Clyde? Are you trying to get us all killed?”</p><p>“Ingrid was struggling to come up with realistic names, so I suggested those.”</p><p>Byleth’s laughter picked up force, and once she started, she wouldn’t be stopping for a while. He forgot about Byleth’s sense of humor, slap-stick and somewhat mean. The corner of his mouth twitched.</p><p>“We’re really doing this?”</p><p>“Get used to it Paul, and start practicing your new signature, we have some papers to sign.”</p><p> </p><p>— — —</p><p> </p><p>According to Byleth’s research, pathways beneath the Monastery District ran from below the galleria and across a low bridge. Their exit strategy was to run through the underground pathways, before boarding a getaway boat directly from the lower bridge, which would connect them with a car further up the river. Then, they would be free to give Dimitri the chalice and live the rest of their lives.</p><p>Byleth tasked Mercedes and Dedue with finding the entrance. While Mercedes was indispensable for diagnosing what explosives they would need to mine through the dilapidated tunnel system, she wasn’t the ideal person to bring on a spelunking mission. She had two left boots when it came to climbing on rock ledges.</p><p>Jagged steps leading from the monastery’s tiny graveyard cut a steep downward climb against the outer edge of the walls. Each step was too narrow for even Mercedes’ feet.</p><p>As they walked along the ledge by a steep drop only broken by small scrubby pines, the river stretched out before them, a soft azure fed from the snowmelt of the mountains that surrounded Garreg Mach. They were near the lower bridge now, and they could look up to see a couple on the upper bridge getting their photos taken, bridal veil floating out behind them.</p><p>Mercedes’ boot caught in a crack and she started to tumble forward before Dedue caught her gently and righted her.</p><p>“Oops! Should we consider that a trust fall?”</p><p>“Please be careful,” he said.</p><p>“I will, thank you, Dedue. These steps are steep, aren’t they? Did you know both of Byleth’s parents are buried in that graveyard?”</p><p>“I didn’t know that.” Dedue’s voice had little modulation. His attention, however, was always careful.</p><p>“I suppose the whole area is very important to her. Though, she doesn’t often talk of it. Do you ever talk about where you came from?”</p><p>“Most people don’t care to hear about Duscur.” Dedue spoke levelly, holding Mercedes’ shoulder as she almost tipped forward down another stair. He quickly released her when she regained balance.</p><p>“People can be callous to others’ suffering when they believe their own is more justified. I’d like to hear about it, though.” She giggled lightly, as if floating between Dedue’s hand and a concussive fall was just one more part of this bright and shining world that she had learned to accept as beautiful.</p><p>They stumbled around the rocky wall until they made their way to the lower bridge entrance, which rose above their heads in a stone archway. Mercedes started patting the stonework for weak points.</p><p>“Small amounts of C-4 will work for some of these spots.” She made some notes. “You must think I’m terribly destructive, huh?”</p><p>“Destructive, yes. But that is not a problem. Destruction makes space for new life. In Duscur, we had many gods and goddesses to pray to. Your explosions channel the goddess of dancing and destruction.”</p><p>“Shall I pray to her now?” Mercedes asked, running her hand over the cave-in to gauge the depth.</p><p>“Simply by doing what you do, you already are.”</p><p>“Well, I believe that, Dedue. Do you think you’ll be able to slip through here? It’s a tight space, but we should be able to explore a bit further.”</p><p>“I shall be fine. I am here to protect you.” They ducked into the tunnel and the light instantly dimmed to a single stream from the aperture they had just stepped through.</p><p>Dedue peered into the dark tunnels of Abyss. Byleth had warned them of the cave-ins, but she hadn’t said anything about the ghosts. </p><p>“You know, Dedue, I want to know more about your home. I’m sure you feel very homesick.”</p><p>His eyes deceived him. In the darkness by one of the walls, he could see his sister basting a chicken while she sauteed mushrooms on a nearby burner. He could see his niece, hair tied back in a braid, running through the kitchen to snag a hand-pie. He almost considered asking Mercedes if she saw it too.</p><p>“I don’t get homesick.”</p><p>“You don’t have to lie, Dedue.” Mercedes put a cool hand on his shoulder before lighting her flashlight.</p><p>They continued walking, each step a rhythm of ducking between fallen beams. Mercedes felt the supports with her hands, at times tapping them with a little mallet from her bag. She noted everything down.</p><p>“I have a little brother. I think he might be in over his head and doing things he will eventually regret.”</p><p>“If I was worried about a brother, I would try to help him.”</p><p>“I know you would.” She wasn’t sure if he could see her smile. “Okay, here’s another one,” her head was against the cavern wall listening. “Lavender is one of my favorite ingredients to bake with.”</p><p>“Interesting. I’ve never used lavender in cooking.” Dedue’s eyes darted for potential threats in the dark. So far, no bandits were lying in wait.</p><p>“It pairs well with honey. Hmmm… I don’t like the look of this wall. I think we’ll have to drill here the old-fashioned way.” She marked it in her notebook. “I’ll make you a lavender treat sometime.”</p><p>“I would like that.” As they walked further, they took in the dusty scene of a thoroughfare.</p><p>“This looks like an actual street, doesn’t it? How strange. Okay, here’s my lie.”</p><p>“I don’t think you’re supposed to tell me which one is the lie.”</p><p>“Oops, oh well, this is it: I feel guilty every time I blow something up.” They stopped at a vast blockage of tumbled boulders. “Oh boy, this is going to take some doing.” She jotted quick notes into the reporter’s pad. “Can you shine the flashlight there while I take some pictures?”</p><p>She and Dedue worked together to fully document the blockage. “So you don’t feel guilty?”</p><p>“No, it’s much too much fun for guilt.”</p><p> </p><p>— — —</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>Galatea was a hell of a town to grow up in. Maturing happened fast. I knew I was a woman before I knew I was a human, if you know what I mean.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>The biggest problem with that audiobook was its blind focus on men who like to be heroes for vulnerable women, while women, it tried to say, like to have the upper hand.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Hello, are you breathing? Who doesn’t like to have the upper hand? Without feeling in control, it’s too easy to disappear and become someone else. Memories make us special, different, important. Lose that and you’re someone’s puppet.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I think we form backup plans to maintain the upper hand. They’re there for us, even when we’ve fallen into our own plot-holes. Because every mastermind will tell you that they’ve come up with a perfect plan, and they’re all lying. Are you ready to become their pawn, even knowing that there is no such thing?</em>
</p><p> </p><p>— — —</p><p> </p><p>Cards were on the newly tidied coffee table. They surrounded a pile of odds-and-ends stacked a few inches high: ornate hairpins, a silver cigarette case, a tube of lipstick, stacks of bills, two or three coins, a D&amp;D miniature. Annie pushed an ice-cream gift card into the center as her bet.</p><p>T-words, like truth and trust and tough-luck-loser, whispered around them as they peered deep into their cards.</p><p>Ingrid folded first this time around. She fiddled with the faux birth certificates left on the coffee table. “I’ve never perjured myself in a court case.”</p><p>“Ingrid, come on, I was there.”</p><p>“Oh yeah? What did I say?”</p><p>Sylvain knew Ingrid. He had watched her disappear into Glenn when they were young. Both of his friends like opposite magnets around Glenn’s influence. He watched Felix get lost in self-loathing perfectionism. He watched Ingrid pop codeine and disappear into Glenn’s every mention and personal anecdote. The codeine didn’t go away when he died.</p><p>“I’ll quote, ‘My client, Mr. Gautier, did not know that the painting was a forgery prior to removing it from the residence.’”</p><p>“You never said it was a forgery.”</p><p>Sylvain knew he wasn’t around for her law school Adderall or the Dilaudid that sustained her as she broke into her white-collar crimes. But he knew Ingrid. He knew the way she fought not to disappear into someone else, how she wore her clean-scrubbed makeup-free face with stubborn pride.</p><p>“But you knew I knew.”</p><p>Sylvain used to worry that he was too big, his personality too grand, not careful enough. He worried she would lose herself in him too. But she never did. Ingrid could be big around him, fighting him, working with him.</p><p>“It doesn’t matter what I know, as long as you don’t tell me. Okay, number two, I would have rather died then marry any of the men my father tried to tie me up with.”</p><p>“I believe you. No one’s going to make an honest woman out of you.”</p><p>And all he really wanted was for Ingrid to be so big.</p><p>“Shut up, Sylvain. What are you doing here this late anyway? Shouldn’t you be out trying to get your dick wet?”</p><p>“So crude from you, Ingrid. Why are you trying to kick me out?”</p><p>“You’re meddling, staying here because of that bet. Teaming up with you is my biggest regret.”</p><p>“Now there’s the lie.”</p><p>“That wasn’t even one of them. My third one is, I know I’m going to win this bet. There’s no way Byleth and Felix are getting back together. And it makes me a little sad. It makes me miss old times, you know?”</p><p>“Don’t blame me. You’re the one who decided to bet against love for your own realism. Speaking of which, where are they?”</p><p> </p><p>— — —</p><p> </p><p>Byleth’s knock at the door was soft. An attempt at sensitivity at odds with her usual ‘no hesitation’ approach.</p><p>“Who’s there?” Felix called.</p><p>“It’s me.” Exhaustion wrung out her voice. Dull planning days made the crew stir-crazy. If she didn’t unleash them soon, they might stage a mutiny and mount her head on a stick. Daring them to tell each other lies would only occupy them for so long.</p><p>“What do you want?”</p><p>“Please just let me in, or I’ll pick the lock.”</p><p>Felix opened the door. Unlike the other rooms with dubious murals on the walls, he had found the only blank space. Sure one wall had been painted ivory, while another was matte white, but the effect was still tidier than the majority of the house.</p><p>“Come in. Are you going to do that stupid trust exercise with me?”</p><p>His mattress lay directly on the floor, and he went back to sitting on its edge. He had arranged tools around the perch and a whetstone soaked in a bowl nearby. There was evidence that he had been cleaning. The floors weren’t so dull that her bare toes would be blackened from rubbing up against them. He had dusted the window frame and opened the window to let in some fresh air. This room smelled more like the mountains than the dank drywall and decade-old cig smoke of the rest of the house.</p><p>“I hadn’t thought of it. Did you want me to?”</p><p>He was silent, and he wouldn’t look at her. He did.</p><p>“Two truths and a lie? Okay,” she peered around thinking of things only Felix would know.</p><p>Maybe he was on to something. They should throw open all the windows and air out the place. A revolutionary concept for a thieves’ den, leaving their hidey-hole open for any curious creature to find its way inside. Opened windows were a slow suicide; they could come back any time and find Silver Snow waiting. But if Silver Snow had found them, well, they wouldn’t stop to knock.</p><p>She raised her pointer finger. “I’ve never seen a real Van Gogh.” She raised her middle finger and her eyes drifted toward the blackened dust in the corner of the room. “For the past five years I’ve missed you constantly, and I know you hate me now, but it makes my life a little bit better that you’re here at all.” She raised her ring finger. “Number three, I’m actually really terrible in the sack.”</p><p>Felix knew her games. They had tried to see the Van Gogh one time on a date, but they had taken one look into the room, saw the crowd of people pressing close to the art, and it was too much temptation not to have a little contest. The one who could steal the most wallets was the winner. Felix had nabbed six wallets and a gemstone bracelet. It was the first time he had beaten her at anything. Byleth wore the bracelet all night long before pawning it the next day. Hard to resist a trophy.</p><p>As for being bad in bed? He wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of denying that one.</p><p>“Obvious. You’re lying about missing me.”</p><p>She scowled. “Nailed it. Your turn.”</p><p>“I didn’t say I would play.”</p><p>She shrugged. If Felix was acting bratty, that wasn’t exactly news. “Anyway, that’s not why I’m here. I wanted to bring you this.” She held out a thick file. “It’s everything I’ve found out about the death of Rodrigue Fraldarius.”</p><p>Silent with nervous energy, Felix began flipping through the file. He tapped the bed next to him in invitation, and Byleth sat while Felix shuffled papers beside her.</p><p>“So the assassin was Adrestian. You called it.” She was surprised to hear him mention the only contact Byleth had made during their separation, a phone call to offer her condolences after his father’s funeral.</p><p>“Adrestia has a track record of framing Silver Snow. This assassin was a young one named Fleche. Apparently, her brother died during a hushed up assassination attempt on Dimitri’s life. She took up the job after him, some sort of hellbent revenge fantasy. <em>Vengeance</em> as you call it. She’s since disappeared, probably eliminated by Dimitri’s security.”</p><p>“So her mark was Dimitri, not my father. I guessed that much.”</p><p>“Here,” she leaned over and turned the page for him, “I have confirmation.”</p><p>“A bounty on Dimitri.” She didn’t have to see his eyes to know how wide they had grown. The number was big, too big.</p><p>“He bought his own freedom with half of his holdings in Fhirdiad.”</p><p>“Where did they all go?”</p><p>“Don’t you know?”</p><p>“Cornelia.” Felix’s gaze was restless. His fingers closed the folder even though he only perused a fraction of the information Byleth had given him.</p><p>Byleth began to rise. “I’ll give you time to look through all—”</p><p>“I think this fake wedding plan is idiotic.” Byleth’s legs seemed to give out collapsing her back on the hard floor. Felix’s thoughts could lacerate her open, but at least he was talking. “We’re sure to be found out. Not to mention, if we fail you’re as good as dead, and that means nothing to you at all.”</p><p>She smiled at him, something soft and real.</p><p>His scowl was trying to scorch her. “What?”</p><p>“Remember when we had to make that speedboat getaway from Hilda and Leonie back in Derdriu.”</p><p>“Stealing that bust of Loog. You put a hat and a mask on him in the boat—”</p><p>“One of Mercedes' more ingenious disguises, I believe.” She leaned against the bed and hung her head backward to see him upside down.</p><p>“The ancestors would be pissed to know you made Loog a court jester.”</p><p>“I thought my proclivity to piss off ‘the ancestors’ was half of why you liked me. You have to admit, he looked just like any other masquerade mannequin they sell in those Derdriu street booths.”</p><p>“He did.”</p><p>“And you thought the plan was stupid then too. You were sure it wouldn’t work—”</p><p>“It almost didn’t! Hilda and Leonie chased us through the canals in a motorboat screaming that we were pirates.”</p><p>“But Sylvain ran a diversion, just like he’ll do this time if we need him to.”</p><p>“I’d hardly call mooning Hilda, stripping down to his underwear, and taking the helm of some vacationer’s pleasure yacht to lead them on a wild goose chase a well-planned diversion.”</p><p>“Well, I was diverted. If you had done it with him—that sight!—I would have been completely distracted and then the whole job would have gone up in flames.” She paused and smiled at him, another real Byleth smile. “I used to think about it sometimes, what you would look like leaping between boats. Like a sexy action hero all shy in his boxers.”</p><p>“Shut up,” Felix laughed. And now that Felix was laughing Byleth couldn’t stop laughing. And they were sitting on the mattress nest in Felix’s empty room cackling like the world was ending. Heads nodding with every breath, stomachs hurting, Byleth doubled over her bent legs and Felix threw his arms back lounging.</p><p>“That was a good job,” Felix said, holding a rare smile on his face.</p><p>“Top five, for sure.”</p><p>He looked sideways at her and it was Byleth who looked away this time.</p><p>“What are we really doing, Byleth? Stealing this chalice, is it worth all this danger?”</p><p>“I swear the payoff will be good.”</p><p>“You keep saying that.”</p><p>She sighed. “We’re in danger one way or another. At the end of this, we’ll have the freedom to choose. Many people won’t have that when the wars begin. You all, though, will be able to do whatever is best for you.”</p><p>He was quiet. Perhaps he was thinking about what he wanted. Perhaps he was deciding, as he seemed to do on a moment-by-moment basis, whether she was worth hating.</p><p>“I should get back to work,” she made to rise from the floor, and Felix used a hand on her shoulder to plop her down again.</p><p>His face hit hers like a boulder, lips that had forgotten how to be soft bumping against her cheek. “Trust punch.”</p><p>Her hand rose to her cheek where the lips had punched her. “That was a sneak attack!”</p><p>“Thank you,” he said quietly. “I didn’t know anyone was looking into his death.”</p><p> </p><p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>
  <span class="small">It's not actually safe to listen to an audiobook on a motorcycle. Don't do it!</span>
</p><p>Up Next: "Blackjack Rendezvous"</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0006"><h2>6. Blackjack Rendezvous</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>In case you were wondering how these two kleptos fell in love. (Slightly NSFW?)</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Clouds were breaking open all over the Ogma peaks and sending their sleet to shiver the foothills. Soon the rains would hit Mach City. Withdrawn to separate house-corners, the crew worked, studying, forging, making bombs.</p><p>“Have you seen Byleth?” Felix’s hair was whipped wild from using the storm winds for resistance training. He looked half-mad and somehow softer than he’d seemed all week.</p><p>Mercedes settled a tray of croissants on the coffee table. The impact sent a few slivered almonds falling from their tops. Felix had taken the smell of almonds for granted, thinking it a byproduct of the C4 and tar odors from Mercedes’ room. Now he realized she had been baking almonds too. A clever cover in case they were sniffed out: butter to mask the tar, almonds to mask the C4 chemicals.</p><p>“I think she’s in her room,” Mercedes said. “Take her a croissant if you’re going up there. Quick, before Annie and Ingrid eat them all.”</p><p>Beyond the second flight of stairs, Byleth’s room was the finished half of a half-finished attic. It was the haunt of moths and the lumpy ginger cat that thumped around chasing them.</p><p>Felix stepped around notepads and floorplans, marked up with a trail of dirty cat prints. Through the open window, a wind disturbed more paper collections on her small nest of a bed.</p><p>In the corner, that massive cat was entertaining a cricket between its paws. The cricket had long since given up and was sawing his legs in a pitiful swan-song.</p><p>Felix made a clicking sound with his tongue and crouched by the cat. “Hey, kitty, do you know where Byleth is?” The cat blinked golden eyes back at Felix. “You wouldn’t tell me if you did.”</p><p>Byleth’s head popped through the window. Green hair curtained both sides of her face, as the frayed-loose hem of a graying turtleneck dropped around her neck. Peeking beneath, that golden necklace she sometimes wore.</p><p>“Felix? I’m on the roof.” Felix handed her the croissant and crawled through the window, fingers knocking aside a broken shingle. “For a burglar, you don’t look nearly comfortable enough exiting through windows.”</p><p>Lie: “I’ve never been that kind of burglar.” Truth: He ached from training. Too tired for finesse, he nooked his heels into a dip between the old shingles and settled onto the sloped roof.</p><p>Like an aurora seen at the poles, Byleth’s hair and eyes were bright before the twilit sky. She was some kind of wild light, lounging on shattered shingles in the fraying sweater with a patched rip near the waist and holes cut into the sleeves to slide her thumbs through.</p><p>“That’s mine isn’t it? The sweater.”</p><p>“It was yours years ago. Mine now.”</p><p>“You really are a thief.” See the first star, count to five, make a wish: wouldn’t it be nice if, when the rains came, they were all born again with clean slates. Memory erasure more like it. He had seen it once in a movie, but he had never found the scientist diabolical enough to do it. “Stargazing out here?”</p><p>“Too bright for stars. Watching the rain head in over the mountains.”</p><p> </p><p>— — —</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>8 years prior…</em>
</p><p>Daphnel locals called it ‘smoke on the mountains’ but it was all just rain. Fog misted the streets to look like a watercolor painting, all shapes blending, feathered-edged, and reflected from puddles.</p><p>In Fraldarius, seasonal fog was a Fall thing, particle with seasonal superstition and cold-fronts, before the buildings took up their ice mantels and turned the streets into a world of frost.</p><p>In comparison, Daphnel’s fog was the fabric of a strange geological phenomenon. Warm vapor from the Ailell Inlet confronted the frigid atmosphere of the Northern Ogmas. And there you had it, the instant eternal air of mystery that glimmered in the wrought-iron arabesques of the ski resort streetlights.</p><p>A world cloaked in trenchcoats, feathered fascinator caps, and wide-brimmed hats to keep off the rain. Felix preferred an umbrella. What he didn’t realize was that umbrellas weren’t any less romantic.</p><p>The casino scene was structured in glades of art nouveau architecture: floral columns, arabesque archways, and ornate windows. Leaves and branches surrounded reliefs of Fodlan’s goddess Sothis, a relic chiseled into the stonework. Half tourist town with access to lush mountains, half active local population enchanted by their own city, it wasn’t a bad place for a thief to fill his pockets.</p><p>On the inside, the Casino Azure was mesmerizingly blue. Ivory satin textured the ceiling in folds, as tucked-away lights peeked through to mimic stars in a pearlescent sky, while chandeliers refracted warm incandescent tubes through the crystalline prisms.</p><p>It felt tasteful and elegant, and Felix enjoyed being a man of ‘culture’ there, even when his hand was in someone else’s pocket grabbing for their ‘culture’.</p><p>According to superstitious thieves, everyone has one particular poison that the universe has cooked up especially for them. A perfect cocktail, designed to rip apart the walls of every cell, seed the antithesis into every motive, and crumble the foundation of each moral code. Were you to imbibe, inhale, or inject your poison, you would be at its mercy completely.</p><p>No antidote, always critically administered. What fun would life be if we didn’t believe that something was always lurking in the wings, biding its time to utterly destroy us?</p><p>Felix met his poison stepping down the ornate staircase. Through curling metal latticework, a woman’s wry face caught his eye. Big green eyes, green hair tied into a ponytail that cascaded down her back, and mouth straight as a dead flatline on a hospital monitor.</p><p>There should be a special word for that: the moment you see a pretty girl across a crowded room and you instantly want to rob her blind.</p><p>Felix didn’t plan. He was a thief, a weapon, a dextrous hand. When something was in the way, he cut through, like clearing a forest to reach a goal. So he walked toward the woman. By the time he reached the bottom stair, though, her face had disappeared into the crowd, a ghost among tossed poker chips and saucily winking cocktail waitresses.</p><p>The night lined Felix’s pockets to the point that he was betting for fun. And when he got bored with that, he had his hand in someone’s pocket. His sticky fingers had wrapped around a wallet and were about to slip back out when he saw her again.</p><p>All scope narrowed to just one person. One person whose ego was big, and whose expressions were mild, and whose silhouette was enchanting, and whose hair glowed across a casino floor. The perfect mark.</p><p>He stared, hand dangerously half-way out of another man’s pocket, until she could feel his eyes on her. (Fortunately, the man having his wallet and identity stolen was much less intuitive and much more drunk. He didn’t feel Felix’s fingers leave with his cash.)</p><p>The green-haired woman with the big eyes looked up into his face. She saw him, pale and sharp, surrounded by blue bangs as deep as the casino’s starry-night carpets. And from fifteen feet away, a smile dug into the very corner of her mouth.</p><p>That was how Felix had caught Byleth’s attention one fateful night in Daphnel.</p><p>Felix had never been a mark. He had been a crush that Byleth had felt, from her touch-starved neck to her tinglingly light fingers, the first time she saw him sneak a stack of chips from a drunk man who was throwing down all over the roulette wheel.</p><p>Byleth had been counting cards at the blackjack table and was keeping her winnings humble to throw the dealer off her track. Suddenly, she wanted to show off. She wanted a perfect hand, a fucking Jack and Ace of Spades, to pull him over.</p><p>To hell with caution.</p><p>Her blackjack performance was good: ostentatious winnings, alluring pretend drunkenness. She made herself an easy mark, just the sort of person she would have crowded like a moth to the bonfire for a quick robbery.</p><p>Perhaps Felix knew that it was an act. He never said one way or another. The important thing was that when the dealer had his back turned, the lithe thief had stepped up behind her.</p><p>“Why shouldn’t I turn you in for counting cards?” he whispered in her ear. As if he had a shot at some reward.</p><p>“You have your hand in my jacket pocket. Who are they going to believe?” She pivoted on her stool toward him. “That this pretty smile has the brains to count cards?” She grinned him one, something soft and fake, before it melted from her face completely. “Or that you tried to rob a defenseless woman?”</p><p>“You don’t look defenseless to me.”</p><p>As if to corroborate, her hand swept up behind her head, and in a barely noticeable flash of silver, she had her favorite stiletto knife placed against his wrist.</p><p>A pink blush flooded the planes of his cheeks. Her mouth twitched a smile into the corner pocket, this time real. She wiggled the knife in threat. “I don’t want to have to escape from a holding cell tonight. How about you let me keep my winnings, I let you keep your hand, and we both walk out of here for a smoke?”</p><p>He looked her up and down. She watched his perception transition, as she went from one kind of mark, symbolized by a big fat money-sign, to a whole new one, symbolized by a nice pair of tits and haunting aurora-green eyes. Not to mention whatever he thought about a swift bitch who would draw a knife on him. She reckoned he was into it.</p><p>“After you.”</p><p>Outside, they leaned against a stone wall with just enough awning to provide rain shelter. Byleth pulled out a silver cigarette case furnished with long, slim tobacco sticks. Felix took a cig and offered the light from his own pocket.</p><p>“So I know your game, you rig blackjack. But what’s your name?”</p><p>Byleth couldn’t stop the “B” from popping out of her mouth. She stuttered over the words. How uncharacteristic. “B—Bonnie.”</p><p>Felix snorted out smooth gray smoke, “You’re lying.” Bad lie, but good to know that he could tell.</p><p>Moments dripped between them, framed in black-and-white by the minute hand on the Promenade clocktower. “You’re not going to ask my name?” he said.</p><p>“I’m good.” Her inhale was 50 percent smoke, 30 percent wet leaves, a blessed 15 percent petrichor, and 5 percent Felix’s woodsy aftershave.</p><p>Sweet silence. The rain pattering the cobblestones. Even then, they were aware of being in a place and time to which they would never be able to return.</p><p>A shiver passed her waist, then the distinct feeling of fabric settling awkwardly.</p><p>If it hadn’t come from her, then that meant—</p><p>She stepped forward, rapid as light, and pushed him up against the stone facade as his bun crunched high on the floral arabesques carved into the wall arch. She had her stiletto knife at his throat. “You tried it again!” she said.</p><p>He swallowed hard, adams apple bobbing against the knife’s thin edge. “But you’re admiring my moxie.”</p><p>It was more than his moxie she was admiring, with him pinned against the stonework, she had a whole view of the slippery man-bun thief. Slim but powerful, breath barely disturbed by a knife at his throat, golden eyes steady and already looking for a way to upturn the situation: a man as sharp as a blade.</p><p>“For what? Trying to pull the world’s smallest, pettiest crime? You have to do a lot more to impress me.”</p><p>He wasn’t going to say anything, no begging, no more joking. But if she waited too long, he might start fighting back. Pulling herself away from him, Byleth removed the knife last.</p><p>“See you around.” She crushed out her cig and flicked it to the can. Even the trashcans in Daphnel had floral lines.</p><p>She walked off, booted heels splashing shallow puddles. In one fluid motion, she tucked the knife into her hair and swished a hat back on her head to keep off the rain.</p><p> </p><p>— — —</p><p> </p><p>The following night, the man-bun thief was keeping a low profile at the roulette wheel. That kid liked his luck.</p><p>“Just try and rob me,” Byleth said, picking the stool next to him and artfully crossing her legs. She placed a bet on red.</p><p>He looked over at her and a tiny smirk lit his features. He wasn’t pissed about her pulling a knife last night? Good.</p><p>“Where I grew up, rain always brought out red-crested robins.” Was he high? What was he talking about? “They competed to feast on worms.” Byleth looked around. Across the table and to the right, a man was betting on the wheel in a crimson jacket, ornamented with golden embroidery.  “The color was so <em>rich</em>, many people believed that they brought good luck.”</p><p>“I think those robins migrate from Adrestia,” Byleth said recognizing the embroidery patterns.</p><p>“Indeed. Are there any ethical problems with poaching Adrestian red-crested robins? They’re not a protected species here?”</p><p>“Nothing’s protected in this part of the world.”</p><p>“These robins, they could never keep their eyes off the tropical green birds whenever they passed through.” The wheel spun. Byleth lost her chips, Felix won his.</p><p>Still, Byleth couldn’t help smiling. “Green birds can be very distracting. I’ve seen them filch all sundry of shiny objects. But they don’t do favors for free.” She bet again on red, and he increased his bet on black.</p><p>“You want to see a bird filch, leave it to the Faerghus blue.”</p><p>“Prove it,” she said quietly.</p><p>“I’ll need some fresh air after this,” his eyes flickered to the entranceway.</p><p>The deal made, the Tropical Green stood and scowled theatrically at the Faerghus Blue. “What a nasty thing to say! I can’t believe you!”</p><p>The Bluebird’s face instantly morphed into a live-wire anger that she suspected always rumbled somewhere below the surface, ready to break free its chains.</p><p>The Green grabbed her handbag and sauntered to the other side of the table, where she settled in next to the man in the Red jacket.</p><p>“Was he bothering you?” The Red-Crested Robin’s voice lilted with Adrestian aristocracy.</p><p>“Oh, he was rude. Nothing too heinous, but I thought the view would be better over here.”</p><p>The Bluebird stood up looking annoyed, a very natural expression on him.</p><p>“Is that so?”</p><p>“I see you’re betting straight 19’s. Is there something I don’t know, or is that your lucky number?” The Exotic Green’s sticky fingers slipped the Robin’s casino card from the table and tucked it into the back of her boot.</p><p>“You could be my lucky charm,” the Blue heard the Robin say as he snuck up behind them and silently ducked to pull the card from the boot that Byleth was extending for him.</p><p>“Maybe just for tonight…” the Green was saying.</p><p>The Fearghus Bluebird was a shadow, slipping away to collect the funds from the card. Once he destroyed his tracks, he waited. Sheltered from the drizzling rain, he puffed softly on a quick-burning cig and watched the halos from the streetlights blur the enigmatic outlines of passers-by. Byleth came out to join him. Her black coat hung folded over in her arms. She walked with a certain swagger that Felix couldn’t help tracking with his eyes.</p><p>Slowly, marking a big reveal to impress her, he opened up his coat to show her a stack of cash.</p><p>“Sure,” she said, “But is it worth more than this?” She slid one arm out from under the coat. On it was a diamond centered in a silver bracelet that she hadn’t been wearing before.</p><p>“He gave you a diamond bracelet? The hell did you say to him?”</p><p>“That’s my secret.”</p><p>“He’s going to want that back.”</p><p>Her eyes swiped sideways at him, “Well, I gave him the slip, see.”</p><p>Felix watched her warily. Then he began handling the cash. “I split this for you.” He handed her half the stack. “Though it doesn’t look like you need the money; I have honor amongst thieves.” She nodded gratefully and slipped the bills into the little bag hanging from her elbow. “So have I impressed you yet, <em>Bonnie</em>?”</p><p>“I liked your code talk.” A hint of smile. “Birds? We could make a good team.”</p><p>“I work alone.”</p><p>“You didn’t tonight.” He shuffled a foot; otherwise silence. “Okay,” she shrugged.</p><p>Slowly, lingeringly, she stretched out black leather boots that pulled tight against her calves, and above that rose a web of lace stockings. On came the gloves, her fingers snapping into the perfect fit. The diamond bracelet twinkled in the rain-dark before disappearing beneath the leather.</p><p>She twirled herself into her black coat like a cloak. “Good evening, then.”</p><p>Felix didn’t say anything as he watched her walk away. She wasn’t worried; she had already laid the backup plan, and it was only a matter of time before he called.</p><p> </p><p>— — —</p><p> </p><p>Byleth couldn’t help feeling smug when the phone rang.</p><p>“It’s Felix, from the roulette table.”</p><p>“The man-bun thief,” she said practically.</p><p>He was silent, unwilling to dignify that with an answer. “You slipped a matchbook with your number into my pocket.”</p><p>“Wait, your name is Felix? Is that a good omen or bad in this line of work?”</p><p>“Please, please hit on me by asking me to be your lucky charm.” His exasperation was cute, like a cat sheltering from a downpour. “All I need tonight is another line like that.”</p><p>“Come to the Daphnel Promenade in thirty minutes.”</p><p>The Promenade knew rain and showed it no fear. A tent was set up, lit by ornate torches and string lights with a dais for the band in the center. Business didn’t sleep in the rain; it propagated. Champagne bubbled in flutes where deals were being made. Whiskey clinked on the rocks at tables laden with playing cards. The bookie held court close to the band to keep from being overheard.</p><p>Byleth was easy to spot in her gray dress with its high back, low neckline, and skirt that flowered out from the waist. Her lines were as fluid as the arabesques of the art nouveau architecture surrounding them, and Felix already had them memorized.</p><p>“Bonnie?” he asked behind her. She turned to meet him. Movement fluid—he was an event expected.</p><p>“It’s Byleth,” she said, running her eyes up Felix’s formal jacket, ornamented in silver accents with strong black lines. Eyes bright and shifting in tone, like rye shining through a highball, brought to mind the golden-hued moon making auras in the sky. It’s amazing the amount of stargazing you can do, even within an enclosed shelter. </p><p>“Dance with me.” She gave him no choice as she moved into his arms. The band played lilting jazz, down-tempo from the Adrestian scene, more wind than piano.</p><p>“When did you have time to slip that matchbook in my pocket?” He asked above her head. Dancing with Felix was like holding a cat that was preparing to spring out of her arms. His footwork was immaculate, but his stance was tense. “I watched you the whole time.”</p><p>“No, you were watching the roulette wheel.” He spun her away from his body, and she clung to his arm with the swing beat. When he brought her back in, he jut out a knee for her to sit lightly on, before hopping off and continuing the dance. “You know what that tells me?”</p><p>He raised his hand from the featherweight touch on her back to flick some hair out of his eyes. “What?” His hand returned to her back, a more reassuring weight this time.</p><p>“That you really need a win. And I can give you that.” They weren’t the only couple dancing, but for all the world, it might as well have been a pas-de-deux. “I doubt you’re the lone wolf you think you are. But if you keep sticking your hand in people’s pockets the way you are now, I’ll have to pitch to you through the bars of a jail cell.”</p><p>“What do you have in mind? Gambling?” She shook her head. “Bank jobs?” His voice mocked, and she shook her head again.</p><p>“Artifacts. Art.” It was elegant. It took skill. “I lost my last partner recently.”</p><p>When she was being honest, it was the baldest honesty he’d ever heard. He could appreciate that. “That didn’t sound like a lie. Who was it? Another ‘man-bun thief’?”</p><p>“My dad.”</p><p>His response was muffled into applause for the band as they finished the song, but it sounded like, <em>Huh...</em>  Then, “Are you going to invite me up to your room?”</p><p>“No. I’m not seducing you, I’m recruiting you.”</p><p>“Do you always recruit people by dancing?” Dancing romantically with the rain pattering the tent overhead and fairy lights twinkling from the ceiling? Byleth would never admit it, but this was a new one for her too.</p><p>“If it works.” He spun her out, brought her back, and dipped her low to naught but the surrounding chatter. “Did it work?” she asked, breathless in the dip with her back bent sinuously and her chest up. His hands were holding her steady now.</p><p> </p><p>— — —</p><p> </p><p>“Stop it, stop.” Byleth leaned over the narrow table in her hotel room, wearing comfortable leggings and a baggy tan button-down that once belonged to her dad. “You’re planning like you have the upper hand. You’re good, I get it. But thieves never have the upper hand and you have to reckon with that.”</p><p>“Fine,” Felix said scratching at his head, hair relaxed at his shoulders. “Teach me then.”</p><p>“It’s all cognitive misdirection. The key is to deny the brain its ability to logic between cause and effect. If on a job, we aren’t recognized as the cause of the stolen artifact, we won’t be caught.”</p><p>“One,” she said. Cards in hand, she dealt herself a face-up Queen of Spades. “We manipulate the order of events.”</p><p> </p><p>— —</p><p>
  <em>The museum of Fhirdiad had been alerted to a plan to steal Loog’s death mask in the early hours before opening. Nothing happened: a hoax.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>It was three hours after Felix had already made off with the mask, that the alarms rang.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Between the theft and the alarms, 98 people passed through the gallery and witnessed the fake death mask, Sylvain’s handiwork. 14 of those people left their fingerprints on the casing. Felix’s prints were nowhere to be found.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>They had baited security before dawn, switched the mask in the AM, pulled the alarm in the PM, and Annie had falsified the time-stamp on their museum tickets for twenty minutes after the alarms sounded.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“How disappointing that we never got to see the famed death mask,” Sylvain was heard later joking to a girl at the hotel bar.</em>
</p><p>— —</p><p> </p><p>“Two,” she put a face-down card in front of him. “We play on assumptions. We’ll never be who they think we are.”</p><p> </p><p>— — </p><p>
  <em>Crashing the von Hellman Estate was as easy as holding up a hand mirror to a narcissistic kid and waltzing by undetected.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Lorenz von Hellman never lowered himself to ask how they were invited to his New Year’s Party. If he had, he would have rumbled their disguises right away. After all, Felix was claiming to be his second cousin, and Lorenz had his family tree memorized.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Something was off about the crashing couple though. To the rest of the von Hellmans, they seemed like the press. Probably because Byleth was openly carrying a large DSLR from a strap around her neck and asking questions so probing no one wanted to look at her.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Make the guests suspect you for all the wrong reasons? Check.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Byleth was living. Much more than the faberge egg that ended up in her pocket at the very moment that Felix had knocked the elbow of a caterer, causing them to drop caviar bellinis into the open wires of the grand piano. A big fucking scene.</em>
</p><p>— —</p><p> </p><p>“Three,” she dealt herself a three of spades. “We stage diversions. A hand of all spades is considered lucky. They’re swords, you know, the spade symbol. But luck is just a diversion, Felix.”</p><p> </p><p>— —</p><p>
  <em>“Good. Annette has the gallery alarms turned off and she’s in the CCTV cameras.” Byleth whispered. “In five minutes Sylvain will come streaking through here and draw all the guards—”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Felix, who had been peeking around the corner, turned his head back so quickly that he might have given himself whiplash. His ponytail smacked Byleth in the face. “When you say ‘streaking,’ did you actually mean for him to be naked?”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“What? No. Why?”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“Well, he is. And here he comes.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“That idiot!” Byleth smacked a palm against her face. “He’ll get jailed for that.” A whir of pink-ish limbs and bright red hair sprinted past where Byleth and Felix were standing. Six guards in gray went trailing after.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“Oh, he’s been tanning,” Byleth said, watching Sylvain’s freckled ass run across the gallery.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“Stop looking!” Felix said, covering her eyes with a gloved hand.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>She pushed him off and turned back the case holding their treasure. “Quick, pick the lock, Felix, before they come back!”</em>
</p><p>— —</p><p> </p><p>“Four,” she set a face-up Jack of spades in front of Felix. Her eyebrows shooting into her hairline. “We overload the playing field.”</p><p> </p><p>— —</p><p>
  <em>Garden parties in Derdriu were a pleasant blend of people wearing gold and people celebrating gold. For the unveiling of the Saint Macuil statue, a private donation from the von Hellmans to the Country Club of Derdriu, all they had to do was steal the statue of honor when no one was looking.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Sounds easy, right?</em>
</p><p>
  <em>They had Annette on a park bench and whispering into their earpieces where each member of the crew was at every moment. Ingrid was in a light blue sundress corralling stragglers toward the refreshments table. Sylvain was in the middle of the guests, telling an ostentatious story as if he were on a stage. Mercedes had rigged some fireworks that she would set off at the critical moment that Byleth and Felix would switch the statues. Then, Alois would come through with the catering cart to load it up.</em>
</p><p>— —</p><p> </p><p>Felix lifted the corner of his card to peek under it. A smirk snuck up the corners of his lips. “Are you sure you don’t believe in luck?”</p><p>She scowled. “What?”</p><p>He flipped his card, Ace of Spades. The catty grin spread wider over his face: “I have blackjack.”</p><p> </p><p>— — —</p><p> </p><p>Byleth cites the day she ended her apartment lease in Mach City as the true beginning of their partnership.</p><p>Together, they entered a life of heists and hotels. They had lifted a painting of old Garreg Mach Monastery from a private gallery in Derdriu. They had hoisted a lesser-known portrait of Saint Cethleann from a museum in Gautier. They traveled to Felix’s hometown of Fraldarius where they nabbed a statuette of Kyphon, the legendary protector of the Blaiddyd family line.</p><p>Every job they ran, they upped the ante. They were quick; they were undetectable.</p><p>They dropped their bags in separate rooms. They planned from the thrones of hotel furniture, courtesy desks, stiff armchairs, a bottle of rye poured from the wet bar of the bathroom counter, hotel wifi accessed through VPNs and portable firewalls. The jobs were clean, always in-and-out with little risked.</p><p>By winter, they were back in Daphnel. Somehow they always came back to that town and its fairy-light stars. The rainy season had passed, and now whenever the clouds burst their seams on the mountain peaks, it was snow.</p><p>Byleth pulled a small statue of an ancient Almyran god from her coat. They had nicked it earlier that evening, crashing one of Daphnel’s private parlors. Pretending to be a Duke and Duchess from one of Faerghus’s northern lands had been a lot more fun than Byleth had expected.</p><p>She enjoyed watching Felix satirize the homeland, his humor so dry you could choke on it. Her job had been to keep Claude von Riegan occupied, as he entertained her with his best political impressions. Meanwhile, Felix went in for the small golden god.</p><p>Felix looked at the statue where it stood on the hotel room desk. How could a pointless tiny piece of the past be worth so much?</p><p>“Stick around for a nightcap?” She barely had to offer at this point. They were practically family, thick as thieves.</p><p>He opened the door to step onto the balcony. Hype from the successful job was still burning through his veins, making the assassin chill of wet snowflakes and winter air a mere afterthought.</p><p>“Our buyer will meet us here in three days. We’ll have to tread water until then,” Byleth was saying as she stepped out, a glass of rye in each hand.</p><p>She was still wearing her gown, black and lacy and tied through with silver ribbons. Byleth often changed out of her formal clothes as soon as they made it back to the hotel room. When she didn’t, it was a gift.</p><p>He looked at her, his face wilding into something obsessive, clouded by the excitement of the job. She handed him the glass of rye, and their fingers moved across each other on the glass. It was a full moon, he noticed from the balcony. Lunacy itself was conspiring against him. He settled the glass against the balcony rail.</p><p>Felix leaned his head forward to kiss her. His chin corrected sideways, allowing their noses to touch each other on approach. When he opened his eyes with his lips hovering against hers, as if needing to double-check that he made his mark, he watched in horror as her green eyes shot shock-wide open.</p><p>The victims of a cruel frost wave, they were frozen in that moment. Lips hovering before contact. Both of their eyes as wide open as they could possibly get. The architecture of Daphnel and the snow and the moon, all too romantic for their own good.</p><p>He pulled back and covered his face. Words rumbled from those same offensive lips in a torrent, “Fuck, I’m sorry, let’s forget I ever—”</p><p>Before the torrent could get well underway, though, she had grasped the top of his jacket and she was pulling him back down to her lips.</p><p>Her kisses were furious and demanding, and it wasn’t long before he was groping her through the lace, fingers untying ribbons as they traced down her bodice. She tangled one of her legs behind his, wrapping it around. His lips burned down on her neck, lingering on her shoulder, her clavicle, her chest.</p><p>“Do you want to?”</p><p>“Yes,” she breathed against his hair, her hand at the back of his neck was cool and certain.</p><p>“I can’t believe we haven’t done this already.” He had the zipper of her dress between his fingers. As if it were merely another step in the dances they used to train each other, he was leading her from the balcony back into the room, and sliding the door shut with his foot. He pulled the dress zipper, revealing her down to her hips. The gesture was so perfect, so natural, that he was realizing this wasn’t the first time he had wanted to undress her.</p><p>“You’re in so much trouble now.” She said as the dress fell off her shoulders. “You’re going to completely fall for me.” She twisted and it puddled on the floor.</p><p>He couldn’t stop looking at her. He couldn’t stop hovering closer to her. “Don’t flatter yourself, I’ve never fallen for anyone and I doubt I ever will.”</p><p>“Okay then.” She pulled up on his formal shirt to untuck it, and her hands pressed upward against his skin. He was playing with the edges of her underclothes, plucking at them, nervous, excited and not knowing how fast he should move.</p><p>“Have you?”</p><p>“Been in love? No way.” And in that moment, when she had her arms up the back of his shirt and her fingers tracing across lean muscle; when his breath was in her ear, sending heatwaves of desire down her spine, she knew that the moment had turned. It had flipped her into a liar.</p><p>“Why are you staring at me like that?” He asked, pulling back when he felt her hands stop moving.</p><p>“Shut up and keep kissing me.”</p><p>It was one night, they promised each other. It wouldn’t ruin their partnership. And when they untangled from each other’s arms the next morning, they didn’t talk about it. They didn’t say anything. They slept in their own beds in their own rooms. Nothing changed, and it didn’t happen again.</p><p>Now, here’s the rub—<br/>
Byleth liked sex.<br/>
She like the sounds it made: they’re funny.<br/>
She liked the way it smelled: powerful and unmistakable in a world of covert and clandestine affairs.<br/>
She liked the way it made her feel: need she go into detail about that?</p><p>The only part she didn’t enjoy had been seeing a man’s face when he orgasmed. She had always looked away, down into the v of his chest, up at the ceiling, checking out her own body, or simply shutting her eyes.</p><p>That was until she got with Felix.</p><p>Because Felix had been a crush and not a mark, and when she had peeked at his face that first time, there had been something beautiful there. A ripping apart between relief and rapture. They had captured an unexpected moment, something worth treasuring.</p><p>She was almost sure he had whispered her name.</p><p>The thought gnawed at her. Had he been saying something to her? More code talk just between the two of them? If she made him come again, would he say it again? For the first time in her life, Byleth had truly wanted to see someone’s O-face.</p><p>So, she recreated the conditions. They stayed near Daphnel, put their heads together, and planned to nab a series of sketches from the much-neglected Daphnel Museum of Modern Art for a buyer in Derdriu. Yet again, Byleth was smooth; yet again, Felix was quick.</p><p>And, weeks since the first time, when they returned to the hotel, Byleth was in Felix’s arms, and they were conspiring into each other’s mouths. Byleth had her hands moving down the back of Felix’s pants. He was hiking up her skirt and running his hands over her tights.</p><p>It happened again. Glorious mysteries moving in the dark with the snow pattering the hotel window and Byleth’s hand wrapped in Felix’s hair. She peered at his face while he orgasmed, and she still couldn’t make out what secret words lingered on his lips.</p><p>Again, they made no mention of it the next morning. They went about the next few weeks pretending that nothing had happened. Yet, through Byleth’s mind ran a noir cinema of Felix’s hands running up her side, then those same hands grasping and directing her body.</p><p>The preparations for their next grift, small though it was, were frantic and charged. Because if they did it again, if they were successful, then they could fuck again.</p><p>So it went, until one morning, after another round of victory sex the night before, they saw each other in the morning. Some deep, stupid malady of the heart, some antidote-less poison, had by now manifested its symptoms and made them decide to ruin it all. </p><p>Byleth looked at Felix’s head on her pillow. Felix looked at Byleth looking at him. And they kissed in the morning. And they kept kissing. And they cuddled through the day, ordering room service and watching the over-the-top Adrestian crime shows. And suddenly, inevitably, as two magnets of opposite poles drawing together across whole oceans, they were having an affaire de coeur.</p><p> </p><p>— — —</p><p> </p><p>Revelations come in all different forms. Sometimes you realize that you’re falling in love with your partner-in-crime. And sometimes you realize that despite his thieves cant tattoos and his general disregard for the law, that partner comes from a long line of Fhirdiad security specialists, and his father was on Dimitri Blaiddyd’s private security council.</p><p>“Well, you didn’t tell me,” he said, not shying away from a fight, “that you’re the daughter of the thief Jeralt. That man’s a legend.”</p><p>“I guess that makes us star-crossed…”</p><p>“I left that path.” His words were soft, and despite her clenched and formidable fists, all he wanted was to pull her back into his arms.</p><p>“Every thief has a price at which they can be bought.”</p><p>“I will never sell you out.” He grabbed her wrist and dragged her against him. “I will protect you with my life.” He put his hand out to her, pinky extended.</p><p>“Are you trying to pinky promise on this?”</p><p>But he insisted with childlike stubbornness. “Okay partner, okay,” she said, linking her pinky. “I promise you the same. I will protect you in every way I can.”</p><p>“Come here.” He fell back onto the hotel bed and pulled her to recline on top of him. Her face was too close for him to see anything more than her nose and eyelashes. “Byleth, I—”</p><p>“Oh no.” She knew the words. “Are you going to say it?” They were running through her head too. “Please don’t. You’ll destroy me—” he muffled the rest of her words into his mouth, his tongue tracing a new hyper-encrypted language across her palate. It wasn’t rejection; it was an admission. As much a declaration as the way his forearms held her against him while his fingers drew patterns across her back.</p><p> </p><p>— — —</p><p> </p><p>They had been partners for over a year. They were slowly accruing accomplices, wealth in foreign bank accounts, their own vault filled with treasures dying to be sold. They were living comfortably, taking few risks. And yet, still, each successful job they ran ignited them with that intense fire that sent them rutting like bunnies.</p><p>Byleth had Felix’s fingers in her mouth, and she was sucking on them as if she could smooth away all his fingerprints. The only possible adjustment, in her opinion, that would make him a better thief.</p><p>“How should we celebrate this time?” he asked to keep himself steady.</p><p>She dropped his fingers and they moved immediately to stroke her stomach and find her ticklish spots. “Something super kinky,” she said in between her laughter. “Threesome? It could be a girl. Tits everywhere, very hot.”</p><p>He tickled her harder. “No. I don’t want someone else around. Anything else.” Her nerves were a wreck. He wanted her to beg him to stop in between half-painful laughter. It was a game they played.</p><p>“Anything I want...” She turned toward him and trapped his hands in hers. The loose white blouse dropping from her shoulders helped her appear presentable, despite a distinct lack of pants.</p><p>He sighed. Here it comes, whatever deviant fetish she’s been keeping bottled up.</p><p>“Anything I want…” </p><p>Bondage? Knife play? God-forbid she bring gambling into the bedroom.</p><p>“Let’s stay together. I want to have fat babies. Let’s spoil the hell out of them. I’ll learn to bake bread and make birthday cakes. They’ll be so smart and so fast and so skilled they’ll put us to shame.”</p><p>Felix’s whole body went numb as if Byleth had dumped a bucket of frigid water on his brain. “And will our hypothetical kids know that their parents are thieves? Will we threaten them not to rat on us because the Death Knight will come after them? Or do we train them in our thieving ways?”</p><p>“Maybe we’ll have made it big, made enough to have a home in the mountains, a space for gardens, a pond for fishing, and a small training field on the terraces. And the kids, we could raise them away from all this.”</p><p>He sighed, and the softest of all his expressions was leading an invasion across the plains of his face. “This is the kinkiest thing you’ve ever said to me.” He pulled her down to him. “Come here.”</p><p>He ran his hands up her blouse, warming her skin with every touch. “Forget I said anything,” she mumbled. He began kissing her neck. “Just a pipe dream.”</p><p>The next day, Felix went out and bought a ring. He paid, against all his burglar’s instincts, full price for it. </p><p> </p><p>— — —</p><p> </p><p>“What are you thinking about?” He asked. The roof tiles ridging against his butt were a forgettable discomfort. As long as Byleth held her rain vigil in his old sweater, he wouldn’t leave. She hummed a Daphnel dance tune and peeled the croissant layer by layer, as they watched the clouds travel toward them.</p><p>Right above, the moon swelled, and a few stars peeked between the fat clouds. The cat stepped out from the window to twine between them on the roof. He hung his paws over the edge as cats do, always testing the boundaries of their godliness.</p><p>“Mach’s rain smell is nice, but it’s nothing to the rains in Daphnel.”</p><p>“Daphnel has some great rain.”</p><p> </p><p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>
  <span class="small">Mood board—</span>
  <br/>
  <span class="small">Felix (think Humphrey Bogart, <i>The Big Sleep</i>) and Byleth (as Bacall, ofc.) singing Fleetwood Mac’s ‘The Chain’ in parlors of art nouveau architecture. Also petrichor that carries a whiff of porcini mushrooms.</span>
</p><p>Up Next: "Blowing Smoke"</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0007"><h2>7. Blowing Smoke</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Byleth is having a bad day. (Dedue’s chapter)</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em>Snap. Snap. A dull thud. Mother cutting onions at the table, while sister sorts the bella mushrooms we could not sell.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>My niece runs up the hill with tins of cremini and rice. She calls into the cave systems where we farmed the mushrooms. “When are you coming home?” she was told to ask. She has an orange daisy twined into ashen hair.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“Two more hours.” We would forage on our way back.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>The white-haired Duscur god for Entrances stares out from the door. The artist framed his face with icons of the seasons, a hot Summer sun, wind blowing in for the Autumn, Winter snows, Spring rains.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Muddy boots by the entrance. Arms laden with a topple of porcini mushrooms. My sister has laid out flat breads until dinner. Hot-pepper glazes for fish and chicken on the stove.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Duscur wine is tart and hair-raising, fermented from blackberries and huckleberries. The more stained our teeth become throughout the evening, the more we trust.</em>
</p><p> </p><p>— — —</p><p> </p><p>Rain infiltrated the headquarters, thudding gray-tinged drops into the buckets Byleth set up in her attic room. She hummed tunelessly to the metallic rattle of water dropping into tin pails.</p><p>As long as dirty roof water wasn’t destabilizing the explosives in Mercedes’ room, Annie’s computers, or Sylvain’s art station, it was fine.</p><p><em>Thud. Thump.</em> Something in the other side of the attic was alive. <em>Thunk. Thwump.</em></p><p>Byleth opened the door to see Felix with his hands around a rafter, half-lifted in a chin-up. She leaned languidly against the door frame: “And here I thought you’d be training in the rain.”</p><p>His back bowed slightly, and muscles stacked against his shirt as he controlled his descent and dropped to the floor. A t-shirt clung to his chest, and some hair was falling out of his ponytail.</p><p>“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” The corner of his mouth rose slightly.</p><p>Her eyes swiped him up and down: <em>she liked this too</em>.</p><p>“It would be very cinematic. Until you slipped and fell.”</p><p>“I never fall.” He shifted on his hip. “Well, come on. I’m down two chin-ups. Catch up, and then we can race through the rest of the training routine.”</p><p>“Challenge accepted,” Byleth grinned.</p><p>In the morning’s wee hours, the leaking attic thundered like a rock concert. Their calisthenic race wasn’t gentle. There was sprinting in place; there was hopping to the ground for push-ups and squat-thrusts; there was the heckling of “you’re falling behind” and “shut up.”</p><p>“They’re doing it.” Sylvain poked his head into Ingrid’s tidy room.</p><p>“They’re working out.” All business in her old rugby jersey, she looked up from a stack of side hustle prenups.</p><p>“If they crash through the ceiling <em>in flagrante</em>, I’m calling our bet right now.” Sylvain stared excitedly at the ceiling’s slight buckling and incriminating vibrations.</p><p>“Not a chance.” Her eyes rolled upward at another thud. “Shut the door on your way out. It’s already noisy enough.”</p><p>Byleth finished the routine a mere half-minute before Felix.</p><p>“Okay,” he said. A begrudging admission. “Slower than you used to be, though.” He looked from her tight ponytail and workout-glowing cheeks to the tank top sticking to her chest. A blush, “You’re sweating.”</p><p>“No kidding.” She walked away to shower.</p><p>Byleth emerged, softly disguised. Simple black clothes that could fit in everywhere, lots of eye-makeup and false eye-lashes to distract from the rest of her features. She contoured herself a longer, sharper face. Rain moisture made a dark blue wig itch her scalp, and the blue eye contacts were a foreign lens over her perception.</p><p>“Wig?” Felix asked when Byleth made her way downstairs to find the crew conferring throughout the living room.</p><p>“Byleth has another date tonight,” Ingrid said as if that explained anything.</p><p>Sylvain narrowed his eyes at Ingrid. There was nothing in their agreement about sabotage, but two could play at that game: “By ‘date’ you mean informant?”</p><p>“And it’s not just me.” Byleth tugged at the blue wig. “We’re all going tonight. Dress for an Adrestian jazz performance.” Time to follow up on that lead Alois gave her.</p><p>Felix blanched. Sylvain wolf-whistled.</p><p>“I’ll be back before it’s time to leave. Dedue and Felix, here’s the shopping list,” she handed it into Felix’s cold, steady hands. “Take Ashe, he’s a good shopper.”</p><p> </p><p>— — —</p><p> </p><p>One decade gives a city enough time to change beyond recognition. If Mach City <em>had</em> become unrecognizable, it would have been almost comforting. Unfortunately, Byleth could see the bones of the city she once loved under this new veneer.</p><p>Familiar blocky architecture, wrought-iron street lights standing for a century, road names like ‘River Walk’ and ‘Market Street’; bits and pieces of the home Byleth remembered cut like shards of glass embedded in the femur.</p><p>Back then, Byleth had lived in a converted tanning salon overlooking a Leicestrian-style karaoke bar. She would look down through the skylight at people singing, while Jeralt knelt over plans to nab a quiet illuminated manuscript from the hallowed halls of the Fine Arts Museum of Fhirdiad.</p><p>They celebrated their successful jobs by listening to their neighbor Hapi play old revolution songs on her vagabond’s fiddle from their adjacent balconies. Some chimed in with the words.</p><p>Byleth had them all writ in her brain like the thieves’ cant of the Fhirdiad gangs, but she never sang along, not then and not now. Jeralt, though, after his third beer joined in the tunes. For all his gruff words, the man had a quick ruffian smile, full of tavern nights and the know-how to escape any trap as long as the world remained big.</p><p>As she walked through present-day Mach City, every one of the new glass-windowed condos was an irritating opportunity for Byleth to see her disguised face, distorted by the window’s tinting.</p><p>She could have used a sight of her father’s smile. There were no more adept pair of heartbreakers than time and change, but it’s the too-familiar past that really stinks with that arterial blood tang.</p><p> </p><p>— —<br/>
<em>Byleth kicked her feet off the balcony and watched the Mach City sunset make silhouettes of the Ogma peaks.</em></p><p>
  <em>“They only had pistachio, not almond this time.” Jeralt handed Byleth an ice cream cone. At twenty-years-old, she had one hard and fast rule for city-living: you’re never too old and it’s never too cold for ice cream.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“Thanks.” She nibbled at it, savoring the chill on her tongue. The noisettes of pistachio offered a satisfying crunch-factor. “Silver Snow bought the old Carpenter Building. Kicked out all the businesses too.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“I guess we’ll have to find a new laundromat.” Jeralt laughed humorlessly.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“I’ll miss The Almyran Pine. It’s so hard to get good Almyran food in this town lately.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Becoming a thief meant entering a world where everything is property. The market is not pragmatic. It values the immaterial over material assets. And a once-sacred town like Garreg Mach had the stink of the immaterial all over it. It collected soul searchers who sought personal fulfillment from location and property purchases.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“You okay, kid?” Jeralt rested his forearms on the balcony rail, ice cream untouched as karaoke music began to thud through the floor. Loose pistachios fell onto the street below. “We knew this would happen.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“Everything’s shrinking, dad.” She licked her pointer finger where some of the green ice cream had dribbled. “What if I get stuck?” Her precocious mind whirred like a windup toy stumbling into vaults and prison cells. “One room, locked from the outside, and the walls begin closing in.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“My kid? With everything I’ve taught you?” He looked out on the town. “There’s no way that’s going to happen. Just remember, Kid, not all prisons are made of walls.”</em>
</p><p>— —</p><p> </p><p>Market street was the connection between Mach City’s downtown and the Monastery District. The way Byleth remembered it, Market Plaza was a place of weekend farmers’ stalls selling meat and veggies, street performers, and independent artists hauling canvases.</p><p>These days, Market Plaza kept its wares indoors where laptop screens occluded faces inside of Gatekeeper’s Coffee. It’s not a bad life. It’s just quiet and not the Mach City she once knew.</p><p>Byleth passed a soup and sandwiches lunch spot full of sad businessmen in their tan suits. When she leased in Mach City, this had been the Black Eagles’ Cafe, a haunt favored by the Adrestian neighborhood.</p><p> </p><p>— —<br/>
<em>Edelgard von Hresvelg was a student at Garreg Mach University when Byleth met her in the Adrestian Cafe. Sharp, purple-eyed, and ashen haired, Edelgard had been groomed to leverage history. Whatever attachments she would have to the art she’d collect in the future, at that point her calculating mind boiled everything down to ideology and symbols.</em></p><p>
  <em>Even then, Edelgard had a powerful idea: bloodlines shouldn’t dictate a person’s station in life.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Byleth had raised her a new proposition: that money shouldn’t determine value either.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Edelgard egged her on until Byleth picked her pocket and emptied the contents of her wallet onto the countertop in front of her.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“Meaningless,” Byleth pulled a cash bill from the wallet and ripped it to pieces, she rubbed the bits between her fingers, snowing the paper onto the counter. “Just confetti.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>She pulled out a plastic cash card. “Empty symbols.” Byleth’s knife felt no hesitation as it cut the plastic to pieces while Edelgard’s eyebrows flew up her high forehead. “Empires profit from service. You take your subjects’ time—their lifetime—and you give them this.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“And your anarchy, Professor?” Edelgard’s intrigued and nonplussed response. “How does nothing having meaning allow anything to have meaning.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“We determine value for ourselves. If we’re brave enough.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Edelgard drummed her fingers on the counter, while Byleth crossed her arms to ward off the silence. They sat with it, staring down at the destroyed currency.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“One day, Professor, I hope we can work together.” Byleth was expecting a smile or a handshake, not an enigmatic frown.</em>
</p><p>— —</p><p> </p><p>A ticket stamped for Bonnie got her through the Monastery District turnstiles. Eyes roving for CCTV cameras and security checkpoints, she hurried through quiet galleries where small swarms of tourists peeked dutifully through the exhibits.</p><p>Her goal was simple. She wanted a feel for the distance the chalice would travel before they could exit through the underground space. She mentally mapped the galleries, some permanent statues, many movable walls. Their glass ceilings seemed somehow fitting.</p><p>“Is that blue hair natural?” A too-familiar golden-tongued voice too close to her ear. “You look like someone I used to know.”</p><p>Byleth’s hand traveled up to the wig for the concealed knife she brought past the entrance security.</p><p>“I’m not going to rob you, Teach. I wanted to warn you. You don’t want to go into the next gallery.”</p><p>“Why wouldn’t I?” Byleth turned to Claude, tracking the odd combination of street smarts and learned strategy across his face. Hair slicked back, neatly trimmed beard, and his face well-tanned from time spent in Adrestia.</p><p>Byleth felt that stab of the painfully familiar. She added his name to her mental list of obstacles.</p><p>“A certain CEO who owns more than half of Adrestia has been wandering through. And boy is she spicy today, you know, for an ice queen.” He grinned accentuating a dimple in his cheek. A gauntlet thrown.</p><p>“What’s Edelgard doing here?” It was a stupid question. Not because she didn’t need to know but because information like that didn’t come free.</p><p>“Same thing you are. Thinking of stealing a certain relic, checking out the premises. Maybe waxing a little nostalgic.”</p><p>“Edelgard’s casing the joint and you’re touring?” Byleth watched Claude carefully as the man leaned back against a pedestal bearing a statue of Saint Macuil. The very image of nonchalance. “I guess you’ve chosen a side.”</p><p>“Teach, can I offer you a little advice? You know, for old time’s sake…”</p><p>Byleth stepped back from him. She watched his eyes grow colder as he registered the motion.</p><p>“You don’t want to go toe-to-toe with the Black Eagles Strike Force. I was once the goblin under that bridge, and it ain’t pretty.</p><p>“Besides,” he swayed his shoulders bashfully. A deadly joke. “What’s Blaiddyd offering you for the relic? I mean, how much does a mercenary get paid to start a war?”</p><p>Byleth shuttered her face as closed as it ever went.</p><p>“You like two things.” He raised one finger: “Games.” Up went the second finger, “and Felix.” They stared each other a no-love-lost look.</p><p>“Felix,” Claude said again. It made Byleth want to shudder. “You like him so much you stole him out of Adrestia knowing he was Edelgard’s collateral.”</p><p>“I’ve hired a guard.” The non-sequitur both defense and threat. “He’s very good. Are you thinking of huffing and puffing at our house?”</p><p>“You better hope your house is made of bricks because I won’t be the only wolf at your door.”</p><p>Claude didn’t brute force anything. If he was going to huff and puff and blow down her house of cards, he had another plan up his sleeve.</p><p>“Where will the money go, Teach? Right into Edelgard’s pocket, so she’ll drop her—”</p><p>“Shut up!” Byleth tugged at her wig. Each of her tells was suddenly as exposed as an open nerve.</p><p>“We all become hypocrites in love, don’t we?” Claude smiled an understanding therapist’s half-grimace.</p><p>“What are you negotiating with Edelgard?”</p><p>“World peace. Look it up in the dictionary.” Claude started to walk past her before turning back to hatch an afterthought, “For next time, a blond wig would be fun. The blue is too serious.”</p><p>The Confidence Man sauntered away, leaving Byleth to a world narrowed to five feet in front of her where premonitions of future hostilities invaded the vapid galleries.</p><p>She felt her wig with a nervous hand and flattened her body against the wall. Across the gallery, she could see Edelgard and the slippery Hubert von Vestra turning around to leave.</p><p>Although Silver Snow wasn’t letting anyone into the gallery with weapons, Hubert was known for his poison assassinations. Byleth had one knife and a set of knuckles in her bag.</p><p>That was missing the point, though.</p><p>It wasn’t a question of whether Byleth could take Edelgard and Hubert in a fair fight. The bigger problem was who else would come running if Edelgard screamed.</p><p>Across the room. Byleth locked eyes with the pale Empress. And then she and her adviser passed beyond the galleries.</p><p> </p><p>— — —</p><p> </p><p>Dedue’s mind often wandered. In his current rotation:</p><p>
  <em>Lemons and bergamot baked into a tart. Dimitri’s request. Home. That peculiar egg yolk umami. The patches of black trumpet mushrooms near the abyss caves. Black trumpets looked like large lavender flowers. Take a basket next time. Felix’s coldness.</em>
</p><p>As a watchdog, though, Dedue didn’t let Felix out of his sight on the busy market street. He forced the grumpy burglar into a specialty grocery to purchase soft-skinned lemons for Mercedes. Felix added ancho chilis and Byleth’s favorite fresh figs to the checkout counter. Then he tried to glare the man away.</p><p>It’s pointless to use a sword to cut through a brick wall. Aka, Dedue was nonplussed.</p><p>As far as Ashe was concerned, he was in the presence of two heroes. He walked along blithely muttering the shopping list. <em>A hard camera case that a wedding videographer would use</em> and <em>enough foam to fill it completely</em>.</p><p>The first time Felix tried to give him the slip, Dedue merely commented, “You don’t like me very much.”</p><p>Felix shrugged, panther-like, and watched a man in black walk toward them before disappearing back into the Market Street morass.</p><p>“You don’t like me. But you also don’t like Faerghus, which is your home.” Shrug number two. “Most of the people who don’t like me, like Faerghus very much. You, however, just don’t like <em>me</em>.”</p><p>“Resin from a crafting and arts store,” Ashe muttered. “Byleth said there’s one a block from here.”</p><p>“I don’t like anyone at Dimitri’s beck and call. And I don’t need your protection.”</p><p>They waited outside while Ashe shopped for resin. “She predicted you would say that.”</p><p>They both watched the man in black move purposefully to a nearby corner. He wore a hat but Felix made out a large face tattoo. Neither mentioned the Death Knight’s presence. For the first time, Felix wondered what kind of artillery Dedue was packing.</p><p>“You are upset about Byleth’s request to bring you home? I myself would like nothing more.”</p><p>“Don’t moralize at me.” There was a slight rattle in Felix’s cold voice. The face-tattoo man disappeared behind the corner.</p><p>“I simply said that I wish it were possible for me to go home.”</p><p>Ashe walked out of the store with a bag full of odds and ends. Crafts supplies like puzzle pieces that they had to hope wouldn’t add up in the cashier’s mind to someone forging a priceless relic.</p><p>“I—I think someone’s following us,” Ashe said, as the Death Knight appeared on the opposite corner.</p><p>“Five blocks now,” Felix confirmed.</p><p>“You know the best way to lose a tail?” Ashe pointed out. They look ahead into the crowded Market Plaza.</p><p>“Fraldarius and I will meet you two blocks west of the HQ.”</p><p>“Roger that.” Ashe steeled himself.</p><p>“I can take care of myself,” Felix complained.</p><p>“Indeed, and I will also be there to protect you.” Dedue was pushing Felix into the most crowded part of the street as they walked a maze to lose their shadow.</p><p> </p><p>— — —</p><p> </p><p>The crew staggered their entrance to the jazz club that night. Ingrid followed Sylvain, dressed in blue satin below her leather jacket. Felix was already there with his unwanted babysitter Dedue. Both were shocked with too much adrenaline after losing the Death Knight to sit at HQ.</p><p>One jazz musician was still passed out on the piano. Such was the early show.</p><p>“Rye’n’rocks, for Felix,” Sylvain said. “Ingrid wants a white ale. Anything for you, Dedue?”</p><p>The stoic muscle shook his head.</p><p>Byleth appeared next. Former disguise washed away, she was belted into her black overcoat. Felix watched her calves, heels clicking across the floor. Sweeter whiskey for Byleth, something bourbon-style. She slinked out of her coat to reveal that lowcut black dress she had worn to pick him up in Adrestia, shoulders flexing from the morning workout he was still feeling too. He watched her lips sip the drink.</p><p>“Who’s our informant?” Felix asked, even though he didn’t intend to get in on the negotiations. As ringers, that’s what Sylvain and Ingrid were for. Partly, he just wanted to make Byleth talk. See her lips move, hear her voice in the seedy club. A bit of the past clung to the way she was looking at him. His breath came short.</p><p>“Jazz singer Dorothea Arnault.”</p><p>Felix’s face colored. He watched Byleth register it. Her only tell was the way she sipped her drink.</p><p>Should he warn her how Dorothea brokered secrets? She’d have no qualms turning around after this and selling them out for twice as much.</p><p>Dorothea wasn’t just a double agent. She was an agent for any port in the storm. The key was to get as much information as possible without offering anything that she could sell to her next mark. Slip up, fall under her spell, and she could have you sleeping in the clink, and thanking her for it.</p><p>“She’ll meet us here after the set,” Byleth said watching him carefully.</p><p> </p><p>— —<br/>
<em>Byleth had been long gone when Felix started listening to Adrestian jazz. There had been parts of the scene that reminded him of her. She could never sing, but she sure could dance. Every drawn-out swing beat used to steal his heart a little. Then he got used to it.</em></p><p>
  <em>The jazz singers could sing your past in diminished chords. Like they knew you. Sure, they never offered a future, weren’t looking for somewhere to go, but in the moment they would hold you.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Jazz clubs had been Felix’s introduction to the chthonic fire and brimstone of authentic Adrestia: smoke, drugs, and power dynamics. Dorothea held its center. Beauty and secrets weren’t her only power. She had a siren’s voice that dogged Felix’s steps through Adrestia.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>She liked Felix’s posture, she liked his hair. She liked the way he watchfully refused to speak as arm candy at after-parties. He liked that she had green eyes. They were a little too dark for his preference, but they did the trick.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>They spent nights in the Aegir tower, while Dorothea pumped him for information and he pumped her for pleasure.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Dorothea never once saw him smile.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“Someone’s done a real number on you, haven’t they?”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Of course, she knew it was Byleth. She was too connected not to. Maybe she just wanted to hear him say it.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“Keep asking. I’m not giving anything away.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>He would take Byleth’s secrets to the grave. And one day, he would be lucky enough to be one of them.</em>
</p><p>— —</p><p> </p><p>Mercedes arrived and joined Dedue at a high top where they could keep an eye on everything. Annette and Ashe made their way to two seats at the bar.</p><p>The set began. The club filled in with men in Adrestian style sports-coats, women with long accentuated eyelashes, and Dorothea Arnault was on stage crooning her way to the basest layers of the soul.</p><p>“She’s good,” Byleth murmured during a sax solo.</p><p>Felix nodded.</p><p>“Have you heard her before?”</p><p>Felix nodded.</p><p>The large double-bass was a tear-jerker in the making, thumping from pizzicato to bowed string-song. It helped give Arnault’s voice that otherworldly character. Songs about a lover who never returned from war, songs about the turning of the seasons. Old, artless, uninventive songs that rang so deep they hurt with those old themes humans were always weeping about.</p><p>The set ended. The pianist passed back out on the keys. The double-bass was wrapped up in its case. The bassist had a beer. The sax player already had his hand up a woman’s skirt as her palm melted into the back of his neck. And Dorothea was approaching.</p><p>“Feeeelix,” Dorothea purred and Felix stood to greet her. “Could it be that you’ve found your crew again?”</p><p>“‘Thea,” Felix said.</p><p>Byleth almost choked at the nickname. Then Dorothea hugged him and one hand drifted down to his ass. Byleth really did choke.</p><p>“How is your tour going?” Felix’s blush was a rose madder bright enough to inspire a Victorian novelist.</p><p>Byleth didn’t watch where he put his hands during the stiff hug. Just seeing the plunging back on the dress was enough. She tucked her head down. Suddenly, her drink was empty.</p><p>Felix was pulling out a seat for Dorothea beside himself. <em>It was just etiquette, right?</em> Byleth shoved her glass toward Sylvain for a refill.</p><p>“Boring music this season.” Dorothea spoke loftily as she settled into the chair. Unlike Byleth who always perched and looked slightly uncomfortable in every seat, Dorothea could hold a chair in place like a queen at court. “People want to hear nostalgia hits. Instability does that. The money’s been okay, though. You know me, I just give the audience what they ask for.”</p><p>“Speaking of,” Sylvain smoothly handed Byleth the refill and stepped in, “We have some lively matters to discuss.”</p><p>“Indeed.” Dorothea flitted a gaze across Sylvain, Felix, and Ingrid before fixing her eyes on Byleth. “So you’re who they call the Professor? I like that—the Professor. I know your name of course. It’s all over Enbarr. Edie really has it out for you.”</p><p>Byleth sipped her drink steadily. “I haven’t always been the most behaved guest of Enbarr’s hospitality.” She wished Felix would stop blushing. It was terribly distracting.</p><p>“There’s a laundry list of complaints, you know.” Dorothea’s long fingers and red-painted nails traced through the air as if tracking the lines of an invisible list. More distraction techniques. “At least fifteen paintings, a Greek amphora, manuscripts and rare books from the Adrestian holdings. A diamond heist?” Her fern-green eyes sparkled. “But that was all over five years ago. Well before I knew Felix here.”</p><p>Felix’s focus flickered between Dorothea’s overly expressive face and Byleth’s trained blank one.</p><p>“Now there’s a new problem. Something about you breaking a deal.” Dorothea looked pointedly at Felix and winked. If possible, Byleth’s face blanched a shade paler. Her drink was rapidly depleting again.</p><p>“What deal?” Felix asked.</p><p>Sylvain kicked him under the table. This wasn’t the information they needed.</p><p>“But you know, Professor.” Dorothea wasn’t done laying traps. “I think it’s mostly jealousy.”</p><p>Byleth’s mask almost slipped: <em>Jealousy? Who, her?</em></p><p>“Edie always sees you with these Faerghans. She has to wonder why the Professor, such an esteemed criminal mastermind, just wants to rob her. You could spend time in Adrestia, get to know Edelgard again. What she might have accomplished with your big ole brain on her team?”</p><p>“My brain’s not for hire.”</p><p>“And Dimitri didn’t put you up to this job of yours? That’s a little hard to believe when your entire crew is from Faerghus in some form. I mean, Felix might have the heart of an Adrestian…”</p><p>Byleth visibly bristled. What did Dorothea know about Felix’s heart? Her latest drink was empty. She pushed it at Sylvain who looked like he’d rather die than leave the table.</p><p>“Maybe you should slow down, Professor,” he whispered in her ear.</p><p>“But you’re not really <em>from</em> anywhere, are you? Now that I find intriguing. Mysterious.”</p><p>It was one sucker-punch of a compliment. Byleth pushed the glass again.</p><p>“Roger that,” Sylvain grabbed it for another refill.</p><p>“I spent some time in Garreg Mach before it decided to join the arms race.” Byleth spoke flippantly, drawing on the old Mach City clout.</p><p>It rang false even in her own ears. Was this typical of past homes, that whenever you wanted to visit you had to break your way in as a cat burglar?</p><p>“And now you’re back. How cute. Don’t worry, though, everybody has a Garreg Mach past. The ones still there just don’t know it’s past yet. Now me, I mostly dabble in Enbarr—”</p><p>“I agree, Dorothea, the Professor is intriguing,” Ingrid cut in. Dorothea smiled at Ingrid: rhetorical game recognizing rhetorical game. “However, we’re more interested in the security at Mach Monastery.”</p><p>“Down to business then.” Ingrid nodded, and it brought out Dorothea’s smile. “I’m willing to sell two juicy bits of information.”</p><p>Dorothea looked at Felix again like he was a piece of cake. A frowning, blushing, nervous wreck of a piece of cake. Byleth wanted to stomp his foot and tell him to pull himself together.</p><p>“All you need to do is buy my silence.”</p><p>Byleth’s eyes went large. Her flaw was stupid, one of the heart. Bringing Felix to talk to the informant had been a way of demonstrating her trustworthiness. And now she had revealed him to someone who not only knew who he was but was also in Edelgard’s pocket.</p><p>“Name your price.” More debts. The harder you worked to buy yourself out of one debt the more likely you were to become ensnarled in another.</p><p>“It’s not him,” Dorothea said. “I won’t send him back to Adrestia.” Still, the threat lingered. “I want money. And safety.”</p><p>“Why?”</p><p>“I love Edie, but the way she’s been running things lately… I don’t blame you for siding with Faerghus, Professor. This assassin called the Death Knight, paints his face to scare people…”</p><p>“We might have run into him this afternoon,” Felix spoke into his rye glass. This was news to Byleth, but all she could do was scowl. There seemed to be a lot that Felix wasn’t telling her.</p><p>“A cut of the job money,” Byleth said, “and protection from Edelgard’s assassins, including the Death Knight. For that, you spill not a word of this to anyone: no facial descriptions, no names or intentions, no breath of the questions we asked, and you haven’t seen Felix since the last time you… did. Rat us out and I’ll kill you personally.”</p><p>It was almost heartbreaking how little Dorothea reacted to the death threat. “It’s a deal, Professor.”</p><p>Ingrid started typing a contract into her phone. One side of the coin, the paper trail linking Dorothea to their heist was an added threat; on the other, added insurance for their success.</p><p>“Ferdinand von Aegir is your weakest link for getting through Garreg Mach security. Sizable donations from the Aegir estate have granted him monastery clearance. He’s also part of Edie’s inner circle. I happen to know that Ferdie is having tea tomorrow morning at East Merchant’s Tea House, and he always carries his key cards. I’ve even swiped one from him before, so if I can do it, you can.” She looked pointedly at Felix.</p><p>Byleth nodded.</p><p>“I also have a source smuggling close to Garreg Mach at the moment. The Savage Mockingbird says to tell you ‘Hello, friend,’ and that Silver Snow purchased three new vaults of the Zoltan XS980 make. They crossed from Faerghus into Mach City three months ago.”</p><p>Leclerc was in on this too? Their whispernet was getting too large. “Thank you,” Byleth said. She was feeling dizzy. “Ingrid will talk you through the follow-up logistics of our deal. Felix, you could use a refill.” She dragged him to the bar.</p><p>It’s one thing to think that your former lover had developed an allergy to intimacy. It was another to realize he was just allergic to her intimacy. Could she blame him? Not really. She left him.</p><p>They arrived at the bar, angling themselves away from where Annette and Ashe were chatting animatedly over martini glasses. Felix leaned against the counter to order them a last round, and Byleth tracked each of his nervous gestures.</p><p>“We’ll go after Ferdinand tomorrow while Ashe gets the vault details,” she said.</p><p>“We really pissed off Edelgard, huh?” Felix’s mind flipped through the previous conversation like a teenager cramming for an exam.</p><p>“You have no idea.”</p><p>“She didn’t do anything to me while I was in Adrestia, though.”</p><p>“Hmmm…” Byleth hummed. “Hard to say what Edelgard…” She trailed off.</p><p>“This is part of it, isn’t it? Why you left? And Dorothea knows!”</p><p>Byleth swiped her eyes sideways at him. She swirled the ice in her glass and drained it almost a centimeter.</p><p>He saw right through her cagey expression. “Goddamnit, Byleth. I know you! Stop acting like I don’t know you. What was this deal?”</p><p>“The less you know about it, the safer you are.” Byleth tried to focus on rediscovering how delicious whiskey was.</p><p>“I don’t care about being safe, By.”</p><p>“I promised to protect you.” She noticed her pinky sticking out from her glass and tucked it back.</p><p>“This is about that?” His eyes were bombs about to explode. “You won’t tell me why you left because of a pinky promise we made seven years ago.”</p><p>“Look, I’m already having a terrible night. I’ll get out of your hair.” He humphed about whatever she was implying. “Tomorrow, you and I will get Ferdinand’s keycard.”</p><p>“Fine.”</p><p> </p><p>— — —</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>On the worst days, I would be found digging in the garden beds. White-flowered moon gardens for the sky god. For the earth god, we plant trees. Then we surround them with the war god’s crimson mantle.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Home is also a thing you plant. It grows. Sometimes unintentionally.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Losing home is more than losing a location. I lost my people, my way of life. It’s something that a world of property can never comprehend. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>I know I am not home when I am the only one who cooks the way I do.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>It is strange that a place can continue to exist while its people are gone. Another population thrives there, makes their own home.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Similar to plants growing upward from the land, we are altered by our dwelling. But in the end, location is not enough to make Duscur.</em>
</p><p> </p><p>— — —</p><p> </p><p>Felix’s hair frizzed slightly in the rain. The clouds were in his face, in the puff of the cigarette floating before him. Byleth brought an umbrella out of the jazz club, intending to leave.</p><p>“I’m sorry I was brusque earlier.” Her words came out in disoriented puffs.</p><p>He shrugged: <em>don’t pity me. </em></p><p>“What’s on your mind?” Her flat tone told him she was being the Professor. Another guise she hid behind. It was almost cruel that she had so many. Especially to someone like Felix who had no facade.</p><p>“Home… Dedue brought it up.”</p><p>She forgot that some people could remember a home.</p><p>“It’s an overrated concept.” An attempt at comfort, but Felix’s home-yearning had always been a fracture in her armor. Had Adrestia become home to Felix? Was he a man of two homes now when she hadn’t even one?</p><p>“The whole time I was away, I always thought ‘someday you can go back there.’ But you’re not supposed to actually do it—go back I mean.”</p><p>Byleth imagined herself a snail carrying home on her back. Shaping it almost accidentally from the bits that she cast off from herself.</p><p>When she and Felix were together, he had nestled into her. He had sought her warmth in the mountains the way one does a fireplace in a cabin with the snow falling outside. She imagined herself as a cabin, smoke rising from her chimney, a plot of garden out front to nourish them.</p><p>But that wasn’t Byleth, was it? The most she had to offer was a giant money tree in the front yard. Go out and shake the money tree. Cold metallic nickels will rain on your head.</p><p>Was Byleth a home that Felix knew he shouldn’t return to?</p><p>Dorothea was the kind of home that would sing to you in the morning. The kind of space that offered room for meditation, compliments, endless allure.</p><p>“Aren’t you going to say something?” He asked.</p><p>Byleth looked out into the rain. She had shifted the umbrella so that it would cover Felix completely. Halfway from beneath it, droplets were falling on her head. Her hair didn’t frizz in the rain. It drowned. She could feel her shoulder dampening through her coat.</p><p>“Don’t you have anything to say?”</p><p>She smelled petrichor and tobacco smoke and Felix’s aftershave. Ghosts from the past. Their future cabin in the mountains overlooking terraces. A night like tonight, those terraces would be washed out to a blue-teal in the moonglow. The dream of it almost broke her heart.</p><p>“You’re my only home,” she said.</p><p>Felix’s eyes were restless. From one of the umbrella’s spikes, rain was coming down hard right on Byleth’s chest. She handed him the umbrella.</p><p>“Don’t stay out all night. We have a big day tomorrow.” She walked toward the headquarters through the rain.</p><p> </p><p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>
  <span class="small">Source—</span>
  <br/>
  <span class="small">Much of the Mach City mood came from listening to a retrospective interview of the album <i>Expo 86</i> by Wolf Parade. They talked about playing music around Montreal during the 2000’s and feeling everything change around them… <i>a whole year like being at a really fun party before you realize you’re the last one there</i>, I think Spencer Krug said that.</span>
</p><p>Up Next: "That Old Flame"</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0008"><h2>8. That Old Flame</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Ferdinand never set up his two-factor authentication. (ending is NSFW)</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>The end of this chapter is NSFW. If you would like to skip the sex, stop reading at the last section/when they start imitating Ferdinand.</p><p>Thanks to Sayl for beta-ing!</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The night tossed Felix in whiskey dreams of Byleth’s hair from the night before, dark and glossy like jade leaves when wet. How flat it had looked in the rain, making him want to twist it around his finger and bring back some of her waves.</p><p>From inside a champagne bubble about to pop, dreams had him looking out on the night before. Edges distorted by the reflections of reflections. Warm glows overlaying his vision.</p><p>In three words Ingrid had debriefed Dorothea on playing her role: <em>Nothing has changed.</em></p><p>As a mole, she would return to Edelgard, living the status quo. She’d sell her same old partial truths, and tell Byleth the real stuff. By the end, Ingrid promised, they would lift her out of there.</p><p>Dorothea could act. She slid her eyes along Felix, and when he wouldn’t return her look, she pretended that she hadn’t. The only one who wasn’t convinced by a performance like that was herself.</p><p>“I like the professor,” Dorothea had said. “She’s tough, sad though. And you seem sad too, Felix. Though not like back then.” That glow at the edges of his vision, her cheeks bronzed all to gold with the makeup and the rye and the yellow-toned sodium-vapor pendant lights.</p><p>“How do you let things go so easily, ‘Thea?”</p><p>“Oh, don’t mistake me. I don’t let everything go. You have to lose some pride in love, though.” He sent her a glare as sharp and pointed as the first day she met him. Instantly, the lines around her mouth lifted. She seemed lighter, younger. “Oh, don’t look at me like that. You love her because she’s strong. This grudge, though, I think it’s making you weak.”</p><p>He bit his tongue on a dozen bitter retorts. Time is limited. It’s foolish to fight with your teammates when living under looming threats.</p><p>“Will you be okay?” He flicked at his hair. The gesture framed everything he wasn’t saying. What would make Dorothea seek Byleth’s protection? What was she expecting? “It’s not easy being a mole.”</p><p>She looked quietly into her drink, bubbly and clear. “I know what I’m getting into.” He had no uppers to offer her this time. No capsules of free serotonin. No endorphin release. “Probably more than you do.”</p><p>She picked the paint at the corner of her fingernail.</p><p>“I like to see you healing,” she said. “You deserve to be whole again. As whole as any of us can be. Soon as you sent me that cryptic text message about leaving Adrestia, I knew what was going on.</p><p>“The thing is,” she wished he would meet her eyes, “I’ve got a girl back home.” There it was. Finally, he looked up, “You’re not the only person who likes music, you know.”</p><p>The dreams echoed back Dorothea’s parting words, like something cribbed from an old jazz single: <em>Time doesn’t stop just because you hide away for five years.</em> She was right, though; it moves forward with or without you. And if you choose to do something with your time, well that’s up to you.</p><p>Felix slipped down the street back to the headquarters under Byleth’s umbrella. He looked up at the roof where they had sat together watching the rain. Empty, the sky too clouded-over to see the stars. Bedtime.</p><p>Which brings us back to the morning and the sensation of being boiled in a stew by sharp sun rays bursting through the window. He pushed away the pillow that he had been hugging as if it were Byleth. Bad old habit.</p><p>“Room service,” Mercedes called outside his room.</p><p>He pulled on a shirt, pushed his hair back from his face. “I didn’t order room service.” As he cracked the door, he momentarily forgot where he was.</p><p>“No, of course not, Felix.” Mercedes laughed. A perennial morning person, she had probably been up for hours. “Byleth told me to bring you this phone once Annie was done setting it up. And Dedue said you were sad yesterday, so I made you a little breakfast.”</p><p>“You didn’t have to do that.”</p><p>“It’s nothing more than I would do for my own brother. Eat up before it gets cold.”</p><p>She left him staring at the tray in his hands. On it was a note, a hacked smartphone, a ham and cheese croissant, and a double espresso.</p><p>
  <em>Meet me at East Merchant’s Teahouse at 10:30.</em><br/>
<em>Don’t bring your phone. Take this one.</em><br/>
<em>—B.E.</em>
</p><p> </p><p>— — —</p><p> </p><p>Van surveillance was like living in a fishbowl. It wasn’t so bad actually. Annie had never wanted to be a jock in the field. For example, when she was in the van, no one noticed if she was reading a fanfic so emotionally edging in every chapter that it brought her near to tears. Oh, they might hear a sniffle on the headset. But humans sniffle for other reasons than tears, okay? <em>They do.</em></p><p>Hacking Ferdinand’s phone was a rote routine. With the right equipment, any kiddie hacker could do it.</p><p>Step 1: Set up an enticing hotspot.</p><p>When not on the job, Annie liked to have a little fun with this, set up a hotspot called <em>Fear the Deer</em> or <em>What Happens in Enbarr…</em> or for the too inquisitive <em>Fhirdiad Security Council</em>. Make someone feel a little clever, and they’ll have few qualms about connecting. While they’re smug about stealing Internet access, you’re smug about all the passwords they’re giving you whenever they log into an account.</p><p>For this job, though, she had to settle for the plain old ‘East Merchant Guest’.</p><p>Step 2: Hack into the tea house’s actual guest wifi router and shut it off.</p><p>Easy, the password was ‘password’. Most hacking was like that, banking on terribly boring human foibles.</p><p>Step 3: As the real guest wifi shuts down, enjoy watching people connect to her hotspot.</p><p>All data transferred across the hotspot is fair game. Annie knows exactly what images the kid in the corner booth has been looking up while his parents lecture him about his grades. And no, they’re not exactly SFW…</p><p>Step 4: Wait until Ferdinand von Aegir connects to the hotspot. </p><p>Oh, he immediately logged into his email account! Oh no, he’s also putting a password into his East Merchant Teahouse returning customer account. And here comes the volley of text messages. Damn, that’s a lot of texts.</p><p>Step 5: Send Ferdinand’s data to the phone Felix brought.</p><p>Step 6: Eat the hand-pies Mercedes packed her for the road.</p><p>Cinnamon-apple? Yes, please.</p><p>Step 7: Monitor and chill.</p><p> </p><p>— — —</p><p> </p><p>The interior of East Merchant’s Teahouse was a product of Mach City’s trendy and upcycled austerity. Antique gas lamps converted to electricity illuminated a mismatch of hanging art. Photographed landscapes, watercolor mountain impressions, and photorealistic graphite drawings of the brutalist Mach City architecture.</p><p>Felix pulled out a wooden chair with a worn red-padded seat and looked past Byleth to a framed drawing of the Carpenter Building.</p><p>“There’s no forgiving this town for its ugly architecture.” He settled in and ran his finger down the tea list. Pine needles or bust. They had it. That figured, Ferdinand von Aegir had chosen the spot after all. It was sure to have everything.</p><p>Byleth twisted around in her seat to see the drawing.</p><p>“That one?” she asked, turning back to Felix and rubbing her eyes. A small pot of Bergamot Tea steamed in front of her and an empty espresso was at her elbow. Evidence of a night as restless as his own. “It’s supposed to look like the mountains. To the far right, that tower stands for Nemesis Peak, then,” she traced her finger in the air, “the ridge that runs down.”</p><p>Felix didn’t have a teacup yet to hide his little smile. Byleth watched him wryly.</p><p>— —<br/>
<em>She had insisted that they hike Nemesis Peak at least once. It was a race to the top. Hopping across rock slides, getting slapped in the face by pine branches, slinging between trailheads.</em></p><p>
  <em>Byleth summited first and grinned at Felix as he jogged up the last few meters. Just as he was gaining her level, though, the dizziness hit, and her hands fell to brace herself at her knees. She stepped to the edge of the cliff and leaned over to vomit. She hurled pieces of apple against the rocks, throwing trail snacks and nut mixes back down about five hundred feet.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Altitude sickness was not her friend.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Even in the golden era of their relationship, she had barely heard Felix belly-laugh before. He was more of a cackler, pushing out his air in surprised wisps.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>That day, though, in the rarified atmosphere of the mountain summit, as Byleth puked the contents of her stomach onto a rockslide in volleys hot enough to melt the perma-snow to the audience of two marmots who were looking out from their wooded hidey-hole, Felix laughed until his sides hurt.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>He offered Byleth water, held her hair back for the rest of the heaving. Kisses peppered her temple, even before she rinsed and spit the water from her mouth. Then, he led her to a spot to sit and shake the dizziness. She leaned against him, feet dangling and purple spots darting across her vision as her circulation did its best to efficiently push the oxygen through her blood.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“We’re not even above tree-line,” he teased, a soft whisper to the battle-drums of blood pumping in her ears.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“How am I going to make it down like this?”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“You’re being dramatic, By,” he had said, hands massaging her shoulders. “You’ll acclimate soon. And if you don’t I’ll carry you on my back.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>She looked up at him. Coppery eyes glinting at her, earnestness peeked through the cracks of his wry humor.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“I love you.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em> It was something they had been saying lately. When it snuck up on him, though, the words were a shank splitting open his ribcage and stuffing more of Byleth inside him. Byleth’s secretive smiles, Byleth’s subtly expressive eyebrows always guiling him to mischief, Byleth’s big egotistical competitive spirit challenging him to trail-blaze up a mountain and then puking at the finish.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>His breath puffed across the top of her head, the first signs of cold creeping in with the late afternoon.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“I’m not surprised.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>But his cheeks were hot and his eyes were closing with the praise. Hand cupping her chin as if he was cradling the most sacred of artifacts, he turned her head to look out on the rock ridges with him one more time before they descended.</em>
</p><p>— —</p><p>“It’s all just blocks to me.”</p><p>“But that block has a peak, see.” She shrugged, not worth fighting about. “It’s not the most representative architecture. More the concept and the history.”</p><p>“So, you wanted to have tea with me?”</p><p>He was trying to tease. Byleth shrugged again. Her hair looked slightly damp, lacking its normal bounce. For a moment he imagined that it was still wet from the rain the night before.</p><p>His pot of Almyran Pine arrived. His fingers, proxied in thin black gloves, wrapped into the loop of the teacup. For once, she hated Felix’s grace.</p><p>“Byleth, I—”</p><p>She put a hand up. He sucked down some hot tea, his eyes opening wide as it scalded his throat.</p><p>She offered him no words.</p><p>He hadn’t known that Dorothea would be their informant. He also hadn’t known that Dorothea would be like that to Byleth.</p><p>“Save it,” she said finally. “We’re here because this is where Ferdinand will be. You know the plan. Connect the phone I gave you to the guest wifi. Here’s your wire.” She handed him a tiny earpiece and mic that would connect him with Annette and Byleth.</p><p>Felix nodded.</p><p><em>I never fell for Dorothea</em>, the confession ran through his head. <em>You fucked Claude. Dorothea just made it easy. I never loved her.</em></p><p>"I can't believe you're making me say this.” </p><p>She shot him a disgusted expression: <em>she wasn’t making him say anything.</em></p><p>He raised one finger. “I've only been in love once." He raised a second finger, “I can’t pretend not to be mad about everything you’re keeping from me.” He raised a third finger, "You're right, you're really terrible in bed. Just really really awful. I can never stop thinking about just how awful you are in bed.”</p><p>Byleth nodded.</p><p>“You have to guess the lie, Byleth. That’s the game.”</p><p>“We were both lying about how bad I am in bed.”</p><p>The corners of Felix’s lips raised. “Yeah,” he said. “Good.” That was one way to accept an apology. He tucked in the earpiece, secured the tiny mic, and connected the phone to the passwordless hotspot.</p><p>Byleth sipped her Bergamot tea. Felix poured cinnamon into his Almyran Pine Needles.</p><p>It just occurred to him that she had never asked him what he would do with his share of the money. Was that, like so many personal details, also irrelevant for the heist?</p><p>“Once this money comes,” he said. “I’m going to take it and move off-grid. I still dream about it, you know, the cabin in the mountains. I still think about it.”</p><p>He was almost grateful when she didn’t say anything.</p><p>Annette’s voice chimed in loud through the earpiece, “The mark has entered!” Fuck. He had forgotten that Annette could hear them now.</p><p>Byleth’s eyes snapped to his. “Showtime,” she said.</p><p>Text started running across the phone screen. “What is this?” Felix asked looking at the messages.</p><p> </p><p><span class="small">&lt;Me&gt;</span><br/>
LOL<br/>
well edie wants me back in enbarr<br/>
tho she never listens to anything i have to say at those meetings<br/>
<em><span class="small">&lt;sent 11:07&gt;</span></em></p><p><span class="small">&lt;Bernie&gt;</span><br/>
edies not even in adrestia right now<br/>
<em><span class="small">&lt;sent 11:07&gt;</span></em></p><p><span class="small">&lt;Me&gt;</span><br/>
no one TELLS ME anything<br/>
where is she<br/>
nvm<br/>
idc<br/>
<em><span class="small">&lt;sent 11:08&gt;</span></em></p><p><span class="small">&lt;Bernie&gt;</span><br/>
are you meeting anyone at tea time?<br/>
<em><span class="small">&lt;sent 11:11&gt;</span></em></p><p><span class="small">&lt;Me&gt;</span><br/>
no<br/>
i’m taking tea alone today<br/>
i’ll see you at G.Mach tho<br/>
do you have a client this afternoon?<br/>
<em><span class="small">&lt;sent 11:12&gt;</span></em></p><p><span class="small">&lt;Bernie&gt;</span><br/>
got a cancellation today, actually<br/>
the couple complained that the wedding portrait package was too expensive<br/>
so you should def stop by<br/>
<em><span class="small">&lt;sent 11:15&gt;</span></em></p><p> </p><p>“These are all the texts Ferdinand is sending and receiving,” Byleth said, eyebrows disappearing into her bangs.</p><p> </p><p><span class="small">&lt;Me&gt;</span><br/>
Hubert, why in the world didn’t you tell me that Edelgard is not in Enbarr right now?<br/>
<em><span class="small">&lt;sent 11:09&gt;</span></em></p><p><span class="small">&lt;Hubert von Vestra&gt;</span><br/>
Whatever would that have to do with you?<br/>
<em><span class="small">&lt;sent 11:15&gt;</span></em></p><p><span class="small">&lt;Me&gt;</span><br/>
If you are both in Garreg Mach right now, I would like to know.<br/>
<em><span class="small">&lt;sent 11:16&gt;</span></em></p><p><span class="small">&lt;Hubert von Vestra&gt;</span><br/>
Indeed. We are.<br/>
<em><span class="small">&lt;sent 11:20&gt;</span></em></p><p>However, we will not remain in Garreg Mach for long.<br/>
There is a circumstance that requires our attention elsewhere.<br/>
<em><span class="small">&lt;sent 11:23&gt;</span></em></p><p> </p><p>“Prolific,” Felix commented, watching the various conversations. “Did you know Edelgard was in Mach City?”</p><p>“Ran into her yesterday,” Byleth commented vacantly. Over her teacup, her eyes were trained on Ferdinand’s orange head as he walked to his favorite table far on the other side of the tea house.</p><p> </p><p><span class="small">&lt;Hubert von Vestra&gt;</span><br/>
Ferdinand?<br/>
<em><span class="small">&lt;sent 11:33&gt;</span></em></p><p><span class="small">&lt;Me&gt;</span><br/>
Hubert?<br/>
<em><span class="small">&lt;sent 11:26&gt;</span></em></p><p><span class="small">&lt;Hubert von Vestra&gt;</span><br/>
If you would like to travel back to Adrestia with us, I can give you a rendezvous location.<br/>
<em><span class="small">&lt;sent 11:27&gt;</span></em></p><p><span class="small">&lt;Me&gt;</span><br/>
I would like that, yes.<br/>
<em><span class="small">&lt;sent 11:30&gt;</span></em></p><p><span class="small">&lt;Hubert von Vestra&gt;</span><br/>
I shall make the arrangements and let you know.<br/>
<em><span class="small">&lt;sent 11:30&gt;</span></em></p><p> </p><p>“I’m going to state the obvious here, Byleth—but Edelgard, Hubert, Ferdinand, and this ‘Bernie’ have access to Garreg Mach.” She nodded. “And we have to stage a sham wedding just to get inside.” Byleth nodded again. “Don’t you think this puts us at a disadvantage?”</p><p>“We’re always at a disadvantage.” Her attention was suddenly razor-sharp. “But I think we can count on one thing. If Rhea and Silver Snow are letting Edelgard prance through the monastery, it’s to keep a close eye on her. And the enemy of my enemy is…”</p><p>“Still dangerous,” Felix growled.</p><p>Annette’s voice came back in, “Oookay, I just got Ferdinand’s personal email password. Doesn’t he know not to send that information over public wifi?”</p><p>“I doubt he’s ever given it any thought.” Byleth’s fingernails were mini-knives tapping the table like she wanted to chip it away. “Annie, I just thought of something that could solve your problem with hacking into the Mach server. Can you remotely operate his phone?”</p><p>“As long as he didn’t do last week’s OS update…..” They could hear the inconsistent clacking of laptop keys through the microphone. “Bingo! Running the script now. What’s the plan?”</p><p>“I want you to send a message through his phone. Find his monastery contact and tell them he’s forgotten his log-in password. If it works, they’ll send you a replacement password.”</p><p>“OMG, Professor, that’s brilliant.”</p><p>“Make sure you text like Ferdinand. And he can’t notice you doing it.”</p><p>“The message app interface will register when I send something through it. I can try to delete them right away, but I need time for the conversation.”</p><p>“So a diversion,” Byleth said looking at Felix. Her mind roved through backup plans like a password script scrolls through combinations until it finds the right one.</p><p>“Diversion?” Felix asked, the soft ghost of a smile on his lips.</p><p>“We’ll do the original plan but draw it out long enough for Annie to get the password. One of us flirts with Ferdinand and loots his pocket. The other takes the card and dupes it. We have to get the dupe back into his pocket before we leave. Otherwise, he’ll know it’s compromised and have it deactivated.”</p><p>“So you’ll go seduce von Aegir?”</p><p>“It’s a good thought, but—” her hand reached across the table, a hair’s breadth from knocking his, and scrolled on the phone back to the text conversation with Hubert. She pointed at the text. “Aren’t you more his type?” A broody and dark-haired handsome man. “Think you can turn on the charm?”</p><p>Felix bit his lip and nodded. A reluctant femme fatale, it was a shame for him that he was so good at it. Byleth took the hacked phone while he stood to straighten his clothes. Black turtleneck, teal pants, the usual uniform. “How do I look?” he asked.</p><p>“Irresistible.” He smirked and began to walk away, passing a nearby table that smelled of cinnamon, cloves, and sweet apple teas. “Fe,” Byleth called softly. As if directed by magnets, he rotated back toward her. “Remember the signal. If something feels wrong, get out, no hesitation.”</p><p>Felix gave her a strange open-mouthed look before shutting his jaw, tucking a bang behind his ear, and walking off.</p><p>The phone buzzed her hand. Annette was beginning.</p><p>Hidden across the room, Byleth watched Felix approach Ferdinand. Wary chit-chat, careful movements that mirrored Ferdinand’s until he was invited to sit down.</p><p>Felix flirtatiously pulled his chair next to the beaming red-head. He huffed and flipped the other man’s phone face-down, hiding notifications. Byleth expected a little outrage from Ferdinand, but all he did was give Felix an attention-starved grin.</p><p>Felix kept his flirtation obvious. Touching his hair, looking up and then away at Ferdinand. It was fun to watch him work. She made a game of spotting the real flirtation from the false.</p><p>On his own time, Felix didn’t flirt by touching his own hair. He was handsy. He would start touching her hair, brush her arm, run his fingers up her thighs. She liked that, she missed it. Ferdinand over there didn’t know what he was missing.</p><p>She watched Felix’s hands move, gloved fingers going close to brush Ferdinand against his hip. The red-head grinned, tucked at his own long hair. He liked to be flattered, cute grin.</p><p>Hubert was blowing up his phone again, but Ferdinand ignored it. Good cover for Annette.</p><p>He offered Felix some tea from his own cup. Felix took it in one hand. His mouth was a flat line, a gauntlet thrown to any suitor to turn it upward. The other hand swiped close to Ferdinand’s hip again. There it was; he had picked the man’s card clip.</p><p>Byleth began to walk to the bathroom. She rounded the teahouse, heading behind the table where Felix and Ferdinand sat. Felix dropped his head into one hand as if he was saying something impactful, while the other flew back at her. As their hands brushed he transferred a few cards into her palm.</p><p>She followed her course to the bathroom and examined the cards. Among the typical cash cards were an ice cream punch card, an ID for an Adrestian nightclub, and the Monastery District keycard they were looking for.</p><p>She placed the card on the bathroom counter and photographed it front and back. She sent the photos to Annette.</p><p>“Annie,” she breathed into her mic, “can you get a clear print on this?”</p><p>“Already started.”</p><p>Hands slipped into a pair of thin brown gloves, Byleth pulled from her bag a blank plastic card and a small sticker printer. “Odds on a perfect dupe?” she asked as she plugged wires between the phone and the portable printer.</p><p>She tuned out Felix’s murmurous talk as it was picked up over the mic.</p><p>“Your image quality is good.” Annie clicked away at her design software, aligning the photos and giving them proper borders. “That printer won’t make anything as glossy as this card, but it should be a good enough fake… until Ferdinand tries to use it.”</p><p>Byleth received the clean image files from Annie and printed them through the handheld device. Her foot tapped impatiently as the underpowered printer slowly sent the stickers out millimeter by millimeter.</p><p>She pulled the first sticker from its backing and lined it up flush with the card, then she used a nail file to smooth the printed image. She flipped the card over and did the same to the other side.</p><p>By the time she was done, the real key card and the new dupe looked exactly the same, except that the fake was a little less shiny. Of course, Ferdinand would know it was a fake as soon as he used it. By that time, she hoped, Annette will have analyzed the card and started making true duplicates.</p><p>Byleth packed the tools and real key card back into her bag. She tucked the dupe back into Ferdinand’s clip, along with his ice cream and club cards. Then the card clip went half into her glove for an easy hand-off to Felix.</p><p>She was rounding back into the tea house when she saw flashes of pink hair at the table with Felix and Ferdinand.</p><p>Five-foot-nothing and ninety pounds, Claude’s enforcer had her perfectly manicured hand on Felix’s shoulder. </p><p>Byleth’s heartbeat pounded her eardrums.</p><p>There was no possible way to get the fake keycard back into Ferdinand’s pocket without revealing herself to the table. Fuck. What had Felix been saying over the headset while she was working? Had he been trying to warn her? She hadn’t paid attention.</p><p>Her best bet was to rush behind them, leave the teahouse, and get Felix to bring Ferdinand outside for the handoff. Okay, she could do it. She just had to pass them silently without being noticed.</p><p>She began creeping, walking swiftly like waitstaff. Then, just as she was moving behind the trio, a vice-like grip wrapped around her wrist and tugged her back.</p><p>“Not so fast, Professor. Don’t you want to say hello to old friends?” Hilda asked.</p><p>Caught.</p><p>Byleth’s eyes flicked around at each of them. “Hilda,” she said. “It’s been a long time.”</p><p>“You’ve been lying low Professor. But now here you are!” Hilda’s honey-dipped smile was a trap trying to lead Byleth away from the two men. “What’s that all about?”</p><p>“Just wanted some tea.” She nodded to Felix, “Fraldarius,” she said curtly, intimating years of ill will between them.</p><p>Felix nodded just as haughtily.</p><p>“And this must be von Aegir. You have a reputation here at the tea shop.”</p><p>“Yes, I am Ferdinand von Aegir.” He shook out his hair with a laugh as if there was nothing strange about the way they were all meeting. “Is it true? Are you the Professor? Surely you would want to meet me, heir of the von Aegir bloodline and all.”</p><p>“Right,” Byleth said, “a pleasure.”</p><p>Felix eyed Byleth distastefully, a hated ex. He played that role almost too well. “I’d like to get out of here,” he said to Ferdinand.</p><p>Hilda still had her grip wrapped around Byleth’s wrist, trapping the hand that was holding Ferdinand’s card clip. Fingernails pricked her skin. The enforcer was strong, maybe not as strong as Byleth, but a brawl would cause problems.</p><p>“Claude mentioned you were back in Garreg Mach,” Hilda said with that bitchy honeycomb of a voice. “I thought I’d pay you a visit too.”</p><p>Byleth watched Felix’s eyes flash at the mention of Claude. She had been so caught up in the jazz club mess last night, she had almost forgotten Dorothea wasn’t the only ex to show up on the scene.</p><p>“Your welcoming committee has been too kind. I promise I haven’t done anything to concern—”</p><p>“Oh, Professor, I would never accuse you of anything—”</p><p>“I am confused about what’s going on here,” Ferdinand said. “I was simply trying to have tea.” He turned to Felix, “Do you know what’s going on?”</p><p>“The professor is someone I’d rather leave in the past,” Felix said coldly, eyes flashing again. “Here to ruin a perfectly good tea.” His words were just aggressive enough to give Byleth an excuse to yank her wrist from Hilda and slam it on the table. When Felix jerked his own hand out to knock her away, the card clip was transferred.</p><p>“Professor,” Hilda said, a tinge of pride in her voice. “You’re making a scene. Let’s go talk, okay?”</p><p>Byleth let Hilda lead her outside. The rain had stopped, and sunlight bounced between puddles on the ground, as the Garreg Mach passers-by made their cellphone call chit-chat noise.</p><p>“So how have you been?” Byleth asked while her mind parasailed on a dozen exit strategies. There was faking an allergic bee sting. Knocking Hilda out and running.</p><p>“Oh, you know, Claude’s keeping me in more than rags, so I can’t complain.”</p><p>She could have Annie set off some of Mercedes’ fireworks as a distraction. She could pretend she was pregnant? She shook her head from a litany of absurd and improbable strategies.</p><p>Through the earpiece she heard Felix talking to Ferdinand, “That actually put a damper on things. I think I’ll head out soon.”</p><p>Well, there was more than one way to get a message across. “Seeing Claude in Mach City was an <em>unpleasant surprise</em>.” Byleth spoke loudly and kept her face directed at her mic as she talked to Hilda.</p><p>Felix’s <em>tch</em> and <em>humph</em> breathed disparagingly into the microphone were the only indication he had heard her.</p><p>“What’s that oil baron put you up to? You can’t expect me to believe he’s just bored.” Byleth tried not to think about the game. The game was already too big and getting bigger every day. She thought about Felix again and focused on getting them both out of there safely.</p><p>“I’ve had enough <em>unpleasant surprises</em>,” she heard Felix say through her headset.</p><p>“I’m here to warn you.” Hilda looked at her suspiciously. She could sugar-coat her words with a brittle hard-candy tough love, but she never did mince them. “Drop the job now, and you can walk away free. It’s lucky I ran into you, really.”</p><p>Lucky? Did that mean Hilda had been tracking Ferdinand and not her?</p><p>“I’m away from Ferdinand,” Felix muttered into his microphone.</p><p>“Thanks for the warning, Hilda. Unfortunately, it looks like I’ve overstayed my tea time. Wish I could get <em>a ride</em>.” She just about ground those last words into the microphone. “You certainly should, though. You look so stylish today.”</p><p>“Right, I’ll catch Annette’s ride.” Came Felix’s voice in her ear. “How are you getting back?” Was that a little concern in his voice? For a moment she could imagine him standing there, truly whispering into her ear.</p><p>“Thank you, Professor. Just remember my warning,” Hilda said waving as she would to an old friend.</p><p>“Don’t worry about me, I’ll get some of Mach City’s famous fresh air,” Byleth called as blithely as she could and started to walk away.</p><p>“Walk safely, By,” Felix breathed into the microphone.</p><p>She felt herself levitate on Felix’s words. Every step gained an extra bounce through a cracking concrete city coasting on its property values.</p><p> </p><p>— — —</p><p> </p><p>Byleth’s knock on Felix’s door was a drumbeat through the mostly quiet headquarters. He cracked it and stood in the opening, shirt half-unbuttoned and partially disheveled. A testament to his excitement. “The key card. Did we get it?”</p><p>Byleth had to stop staring at his chest.</p><p>She held the plastic treasure between two of her fingers. Felix grinned, and his still gloved fingers snatched it away from her. “I am Ferdinand von Aegir,” Felix cackled twirling the card around his finger.</p><p>“No,” Byleth grabbed it back from him. “No, I am Ferdinand von Aegir.” She tested the card’s flexibility, held it up to the light to find it completely opaque. “For someone whose identity is so important to them, it sure was easy to steal. Watching you seduce him was…” She was looking at Felix’s collarbones, at his neck, at his blushing face. “Just perfect.”</p><p>A rosy blush flooded her cheeks, leaving her young and honest.</p><p>“You’re into that?” He grabbed the card back from her again. “Come and get it.”</p><p>“You’re perky this afternoon.” Her wry comment was completely undermined by the way she rushed at him across the tiny room, arms out to grab the card. She was reaching for it, for him, his hair, his arms, no matter what she had to grab to get it. She had one hand planted on his chest and the other was grabbing his arm to drag it down from where he held the card above her head.</p><p>In a beat, they both realized what they were doing. Their eyes met: <em>oh shit</em>.</p><p>“Remember how we…”</p><p>She could feel his heat, smell his aftershave. She could almost taste his smirk. “Don’t say it.”</p><p>“…celebrated.”</p><p>He dragged her hand out of the way and pressed his chest against her. One leg wedged between hers. He let go of her hand and let his fingers drift across her lips as her mouth dropped open.</p><p>“You should,” she huffed against the leather of his gloves, “get out of my space before we do something <em>you</em> regret.”</p><p>“Something <em>I</em> regret?” Here he was, trying to satisfy a need they both had, and she was issuing challenges. “All I said was that I wouldn’t kiss you. We don’t need to kiss.”</p><p>“No feelings, no kissing?” She was talking into his fingers, and it took everything she had not to melt into him altogether. “I’m hot already.”</p><p>“Fine.” He drew back, but she followed, “If you don’t want—”</p><p>“That wasn’t sarcasm.” Her voice was rough, verging on needy. He looked at her eyes, pupils blown out, her legs already beginning to tremble. She grabbed his gloved hand and put it on her thigh under her skirt.</p><p>Of all the ways to betray yourself, falling in love was right up there with turning yourself in to the authorities after a bank heist. Above that, though, is denial. There is no self-betrayal like denial.</p><p>No feelings? What’s the harm in that?</p><p>Felix stepped across the tiny room and kick the door closed. Then, in a matter of seconds, he was back in her space and driving her toward the wall. Her hand on his neck, his body pressing against hers. Everything was moving so quickly she could hardly think about the implications of this moment that they had both dreamed about in spurts of desperate fantasy for five years.</p><p>“Turn around,” he growled. Her body spun to face the wall, and a gloved hand pushed aside her hair and traced up the back of her neck, fingertips bumping over the top of her spine.</p><p>He tracked the way her hips moved as he began unfastening his pants. She bent over, pulled her skirt up over her hips and her tights down over her ass, showy and slow. As the elastic moved down each inch of bared skin, it marked its impression in her flesh before allowing it to bounce back as it passed.</p><p>Felix watched, mouth burning, throbbing cock growing so hard he thought he might burst on the spot. He let his pants drop and catch around his calves.</p><p>Wordlessly, Byleth snagged a condom from her purse and threw the bag half-way across the room. Visions of his room littered again with Byleth’s messy piles of clothes, with her discarded bras and dresses puddled to the ground, those things he never thought he would miss spurred him on. She reached back to offer him the foil-wrapped latex.</p><p>Bending her against the wall, he swiped a finger down between her legs. The leather snagged her skin, sticking until it was slick. He could feel her body shuddering against his chest.</p><p>Pulling off one of his gloves, he worked at her until he could feel her already starting to throb as she backed up onto his hand. Swift fingers like javelins of light shot psychedelic tracers across her vision.</p><p>She wanted him to crack open her silicon heart, pour his unique poison all over her switchboards, shoot electricity all through her motherboard, and wreck every synapse until there was nothing left but fucking and fighting and forgiving and loving and screaming his name.</p><p>He choked himself inside her, as her whole body gasped around him. This push and pull was a battle they had been fighting for weeks. And when she was backing up onto him, searching to feel his pelvis against her ass yet again, oh that was a flame he recognized.</p><p>“Tell me,” she gasped. It was annoying that she could still talk with the way he was filling her up. “Tell me how much you hate me.” He pushed her closer against the wall.</p><p>“I hate you so much,” he bent into her ear and breathed. “When you’re around, you’re the only thing I can look at.” He pulled her hips back to him. “I hate you so much, all I can think about is ripping you apart beneath me.”</p><p>He dropped his hand down her front to rub her raw with each thrust, while every push branded him a little more. </p><p>“Wreck me.” Growled through the room, the words fried her voice. </p><p>His hand was on her hip, jerking her back and forth against him. That leather-gloved hand grasped and dimpled her skin as if he was committing a crime and afraid to leave fingerprints. The top of her spandex tights stretched between her spread legs and dug into her parted thighs.</p><p>He knew, without even having to see, how her breasts pressed against the wall every time he pushed her forward. He relished her arms, bent and splayed against the wall trying to hold herself stable, even as he knew she was feeling it.</p><p>“Ahh, Felix, fuck.”  Her voice was ragged and overwhelmed and so in need.</p><p>Not wanting anyone to hear, he raised his hand and from her hip and grabbed the fingertips of the glove between his teeth to tug it off. He covered her mouth with his hand. She opened it, letting him slip a finger inside. It wasn’t a kiss to bite his fingers. It wasn’t a kiss at all.</p><p>For lack of anything better to do with his mouth, because kissing her neck and shoulders was out of the question, he leaned his face into the back of her head and breathed in her hair. That too was not a kiss at all.</p><p>Call it coincidence. Call it habit, or some kind of hateful ironic providence. But they always came together. She would start pulsing, and he couldn’t stop, and she was writhing by the time he was pushing through his last deliberate thrusts.</p><p>Switchboards of the brain sparking like someone had poured soda all over them. You can pretend to be a robot all you want—no feelings, right?—but an orgasm is a matter of flesh and blood and her ass was pink when he was done, and his chest was flushed from coming. He removed his pruned-up fingers from her mouth, and his arm wrapped around her rib cage as he jolted aftershocks inside of her.</p><p>Felix pulled out and there was a simple moment reserved just for breathing.</p><p>Still with her back to him, she snapped her stockings back up around her tight waist and turned around, pulling the hem of her skirt down in the process.</p><p>Felix still had his pants down. Face flushed, pupils dilated, bloodless brain.</p><p>Was he supposed to say something? They were just using each other, right? How do you tell someone how much you hate them as you screwed their brains out? If Felix had a therapist, they would be getting an express call.</p><p>Byleth turned and looked at him. For a second, he thought she was going to cross the line and kiss him. He leaned his head down toward her, as her eyes opened wide and panicked.</p><p>God, he really wanted to feel her lips against his. Hug him. Lead him back to the bed and let him hold her for an hour. He closed his eyes. All she had to do was cross the distance.</p><p>But Byleth did what she always did. She took charge of the situation.</p><p>She ruffled his hair and walked away, leaving him there with his pants down. She walked out with the card key, ready to hand it off to Annette. After all, there was no time to lose when it came to making a duplicate.</p><p>Felix exhaled to the bottom of his diaphragm. How hard was it to feel satisfied after a good fuck? He leaned his forehead against the wall hoping to god Byleth had shut the door behind her.</p><p> </p><p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>
  <span class="small">Origin story—</span>
  <br/>
  <span class="small">So, the idea for this fic came about while dancing around to Big Boi’s “Back Up Plan.” Which is definitely not about heists… if that’s any explanation for the end of this chapter. Incidentally, ‘OutKast exists’ was the first canon thing I knew about this strange mish-mash AU.</span>
</p><p>Next Up: “Your Brain on Morphine”</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0009"><h2>9. Your Brain on Morphine</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>On Saturday, they case the joint, and there will be no turning back. Tonight, they feast. (Mercedes’s chapter)</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em>Heist plans, like any scrumptious pastry, have layers, formulas, and essential timing.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Imagine a napoleon.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Layer 1 — The Pastry:</em><br/>
<em>Rest the puff pastry in the icebox between each turn of the dough. When baking it, weight-press the dough between two sheet trays with bricks on top for tight layers. Bake it past your instincts because underbaked is bland. It should be at least golden brown or don’t even bother.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>A plan is a combination of opposites: some of us can handle being crushed by pressure; others will always bounce back. Which, I think, brings us to the filling…</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Layer 2 — The Filling:</em><br/>
<em>Mousse should be rich and fluffy, never rubbery. This is also where you spice things up! Jam between layers, a tart reduction, or simply fresh fruit can be a delight.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>We bounce back. We innovate. But to do that, you have to think about what can go wrong. It hurts, I know. To look in the face of failure, sometimes you reach for the stronger stuff. You reach for love, for meaning, for hope…</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Layer 3 — The Icing:</em><br/>
<em>The icing on top is fondant paste, made from confectioner’s sugar and water. The stuff hummingbirds live for. Add a drop of lemon oil to give it flavor. Dye some icing, and stripe the top, then pull your knife through in alternating directions. A crisscrossing pattern that looks more complicated than it is.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>So what if backup plans hurt? That’s what we have painkillers for, right? Bite your knuckle and push through. I promise there will be dessert at the end.</em>
</p><p> </p><p>— — —</p><p> </p><p>The old gods were tools of bone and magic as the stories go. Historians say the Church of Seiros fought dirty to keep the new gods of silicone and radio waves and instant data transfers from manifesting in Fodlan. And when they finally lost, Seiros left behind a spiritual vacuum into which every subculture poured its superstitions.</p><p>Cybernetic ghosts whispered through wires and wifi radio waves. A gremlin hunched over a keyboard, Annie wielded the power of a demi-god, punching her way through the Monastery District server in the hacker version of traceless gloves.</p><p>Of course, some things could go wrong. A careless and detectable backdoor would hand her right over to the slippery Lysethia. And then she would have to turn on the old Annie D. charm, which usually meant putting on the hip hop and dancing it out. She wondered how Lysethia might respond to that.</p><p>The Monastery District’s online security was vault-like. The servers and end-clients were patched and up-to-date. It was encircled by perfectly-configured firewalls, defended by anti-virus software, and all the traffic was being watched. Too many air-tight precautions might seem like a tech security circle-jerk, but if you have the skills, one vulnerability could take the whole system down.</p><p>This time, Annie had a password. Sure, Ferdinand’s password didn’t give her root access to the server, but it gave her a foot in the door for a client-side attack. The IP tracking link she had left in his phone pinpointed his location. All she had to do was use that location for her VPN. Like teleportation, right?</p><p>Annie laid her trap. It had to be something it would make sense for Ferdinand to open on the server.  A charity art auction invitation? Perfect bait.</p><p>Masquerading as Ferdinand, Annie opened her malware and sat back as it burrowed a wormhole right through that pesky firewall. Her backdoor was less than forty clean lines of script, elegant as a Petrarchan sonnet, and it would bring Lysethia’s security to its knees.</p><p>While she worked, Annie wasn’t aware of quite how much she had eaten of Mercedes’s sugary-lemon poppyseed loaf. It’s as if the slices had traveled from the plate into her mouth by a will of their own.</p><p>The loaf tasted like a day spent in the garden, temperature a perfect medium, strawberries on the bush, graphic novel in hand. It tasted like reading a whole newspaper and not seeing anything that would incriminate or incarcerate any of your lovely but dubious friends.</p><p>It was an old empire recipe, all but lost. When Mercedes got her money, she would give the world lemon poppyseed loaves, and the world would smile.</p><p>Mercedes watched, not bothering to hide her pleased smile, as Dedue ate first one slice, and then as he snuck back into the kitchen to eat another. By the afternoon, between Dedue and Annette, three-quarters of the loaf were gone.</p><p>It was rare to see Dedue eat at all. He was shy about food prepared by others and even shyer about those foods he prepared himself. He hardly touched the flatbreads Mercedes made for everyone. This day, though, if Dedue’s eyes were wide with pupils doubled their normal size, shining with reflections whenever Mercedes caught him nibbling a poppyseed slice as he watered Ashe’s basil plant, it wasn’t from the opium content of the poppyseeds.</p><p>Small touches—the constant pattering of footsteps on the stairs and the smell of quick-breads fresh from the oven—made their hideout feel like home. But it was the basil plant that really brought their domestic situation to life. When no one was looking, Annette sang to it. Ashe had little dialogs with it about the books he was reading. Dedue watered it each day. And in return, the potted basil predicted when it would rain by reaching its leaves upward to grasp water from the sky. Plus, they could eat it.</p><p>“Dedue,” Mercedes said when she caught him sneaking his third slice of poppyseed loaf. “Would you like to make dinner with me tonight? We’ll make it for everybody, a big family dinner.”</p><p>Dedue’s chewing halted. He nodded, and his eyes kept their shine.</p><p>As if nothing had transpired, Mercedes blithely folded a parchment paper cone into a piping bag and filled it with chocolate. Quick motions made scrollwork on top of her dessert napoleons, stretching the chocolate into swirls and curves that beaded up at the ends.</p><p>Annie shot Mercedes a look: <em>ohoho, making dinner together?</em></p><p>Mercedes grinned and waved Annie away with the hand holding the piping bag. She accidentally flung chocolate in a stream all over her hand, then raised it to her mouth.</p><p>The gesture said: <em>Get back to work.</em></p><p>The gesture said: <em>We’ll talk later.</em></p><p>The gesture said: <em>Isn’t he cute?</em></p><p>Now, the card key was a more complicated code to crack. Luck was on their side so far. The card was still active, meaning Ferdinand hadn’t found the fake.</p><p>Duplicating the access card’s Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) chip was the source of Annette’s problems. The first step had been to get her hands on a RFID Scanner and some blank cards. Done. She was halfway through mimicking the RFID’s remote frequency when she came across another snag.</p><p>Shit.</p><p>This card had updating data, which meant the RFID could read and rewrite itself with changeable tags. When she checked the near field communication (NFC) tags to read the data on the card, she found that it was mutating every couple of minutes. Watching it was like trying to get hold of a numerical Hydra. Every time Annie thought she had the pattern it shifted.</p><p>Fuck.</p><p>This put them at high risk of their access cards becoming invalid in the middle of the heist. Annie knew the Professor would never forgive her if they encountered a complete lockout with all of their people inside the monastery. Hell, she’d never forgive herself for that.</p><p>Time to channel her inner tech-wizard Hercules. Whatever the silicone gods would have us believe, most data wasn’t random, especially on a limited capacity chip. Annette just had to find the pattern, learn how to write it, and they would be home free. Right?</p><p> </p><p>— — —</p><p> </p><p>The good things in life make people nervous: crime, sex, love, gambling, hope, friendship, a good brawl. It’s all hardwired into the brain.</p><p>When we get jumpy, nerves give us dope.</p><p>On a normal day, neurotransmitters block dopamine signals. This stops our circuit boards from being flooded with feelings of painlessness and pleasure all the time. Because who would ever want that life of bliss?</p><p>So we stress our body into giving us that pleasure. We spur it with pain, food, exercise, and sex, knowing that the pituitary gland will release endorphins and open the dope gates. When it’s natural, it should be safe. No risk of dependency.</p><p>One way or another, though, we are all programmable by behaviorism. If dopamine is the reward, and sex is the impetus, what’s to stop you once you start?</p><p>To answer the question ‘how hard is it to feel satisfied after a good fuck?’ It all depends on your dope dealer.</p><p>“Here’s where we are.” Ingrid hovered over Sylvain blocking out his light as he rubbed some scratches into his faux chalice with a brillo pad. “Byleth and Felix are avoiding each other and they’re supposed to be ‘throwing a wedding.’”</p><p>“So you want me to go wingman them? Despite our little bet?” Sylvain leaned back at the desk and rested his head in two hands.</p><p>“Do you think it was that thing with Dorothea?”</p><p>“Announcement!” Mercedes said, stepping in from the kitchen. “I don’t care who’s avoiding whom. Dedue and I are fixing dinner tonight and we expect everyone to be there.”</p><p>“It’s bigger than that, Mercedes. If we don’t start nailing down the details of this wedding, the planners at Garreg Mach will see right through our sham, and then the whole plan’s up in flames.” Ingrid caught the arsonist’s involuntary smile. “And not the good kind,” she added gravely.</p><p>Just then, they heard the headquarters door squeal open and slam shut, as Byleth stomped into the living room, loose jacket swinging on her shoulders. “We need more cash,” she was saying heatedly into the phone. “Liquidate that manuscript already.” A pause as Byleth’s eyebrows narrowed to V’s over her eyes. “I don’t want it in crypto, I need it in cold hard cash Dimitri and pronto.”</p><p>Mercedes rushed up to her, “Here, let me talk to him.”</p><p>“Professor,” Ingrid said, eyeing Byleth’s mood as she passed off the phone. “We need to plan wedding details.”</p><p>“Right.” Byleth pulled around a chair and watched Sylvain’s eyes refract huge through the other side of a magnifying glass while he turned his false chalice in his gloved hands. “Make sure you get the wearing on the engraved section,” she said.</p><p>He grinned, proud and cocky, “My specialty.”</p><p>“Professor,” Ingrid tried again. “Felix should be here to plan too.”</p><p>“Right.” Byleth rose reluctantly from her seat and went upstairs.</p><p>A knock on his door. An annoyed Felix head popped out. Byleth’s blank face: “We have to talk.”</p><p>Dopamine dependency is a strange creature. Once you start getting your endorphins from external sources, you lose the ability to do it for yourself.</p><p>And if you don’t let yourself grab and caress your source; if you don’t tell them how much you really do care about them and release the dopamine from its neuroinhibiter barrier; if you don’t kiss the person you love and let the sensation zing right into your nerves, then you face the consequences of withdrawal: irritation and depression.</p><p>He grimaced and made to shut the door in her face. She stopped it with her foot, wincing as it hit hard against her arch. “About wedding planning.” <em>Tch:</em>  fuck off. “Fake wedding planning.”</p><p>A <em>humph</em>. “I know.”</p><p>“Will you come downstairs?”</p><p>“Fine.” He watched her begin to say something else and then decide against it. Why wasn’t she stepping back so they could both walk out the door? He wanted to tell her to move. He wanted to press against her chest and rub his hands up her spine so abrasively it would strip away the flesh and show her bones below. “I’ll meet you down there.”</p><p>“Good, okay,” she turned and left.</p><p>Ingrid had a wedding-plans binder set out over the tabletop. Among cut-outs of dresses and flowers were organized lists of fake guests. “This looks convincing,” Byleth flipped through the binder until she found the actual disguises that Mercedes had been planning for them.</p><p>“I can do some forging of my own,” Ingrid said sardonically. “Anyway professor. This is the design for the dress you’ll wear this weekend. Beside it is what you’ll wear to the heist. You and Felix will be fully disguised. Wigs, contacts everything.” Both dresses had skirts that were meant to be stripped away to a set of shorts and tights below and fairly breathable bodices. The one for this weekend was a soft blue to put people at ease.</p><p>“Completely disguised, hmmm? Maybe if Felix and I don’t recognize each other this will actually work.”</p><p>“Professor, do you still think this is a good idea?” Ingrid nervously tapped a pen against the binder rings. “If you guys blow it.”</p><p>“What’s a bad idea?” Felix asked. He had snuck up behind them and now he was leaning over to look at the disguise concepts.</p><p>“You have a little…” Byleth picked something out of his hair, “just dust.” He scowled, pissed, but he didn’t pull away.</p><p>Sylvain threw a drafting pencil at Ingrid who jerked her head around to find him mouthing theatrically: <em>You are so going to lose.</em> He was pointing his finger and drawing a line between Felix and Byleth, and he only stopped when both of them turned to glare at him.</p><p>“I need a drink,” Ingrid said getting up.</p><p>“When we get there, the wedding coordinator will start touring and advertising their services.” Byleth said while Felix settled into the chair Ingrid vacated. “Catering, setup, they’ll source the flowers and decorations if we pick one of their packages, which we should since it will make things easier.”</p><p>“Yeah, I don’t care about any of this.”</p><p>“Pretend to. You were planning to get married once, channel that.” His hand clenched on the table. Hers darted out beneath and grasped his knee. “Sorry, that was a low blow.”</p><p>He still looked like he wanted to punch her.</p><p>“I only mean, if we want to see where they keep the vaults, we have to put on a damn good performance.” She let go of his knee. “Also, we’re supposed to be sitting for a portrait.”</p><p>“A portrait?” He sputtered. “someone’s going to paint us?”</p><p>“Just photographing us right now. We won’t go through with the full package. I want to get a good look at that Bernie person from Ferdinand’s texts and whoever else might be in Edelgard’s court.”</p><p>“Fine. So what’s the good part of the plan?”</p><p>She pulled over a scan of the monastery floorplan. “These are the doors that I want to check out.” She pointed them out in turn. “This one here leads to a space under the monastery. This looks like something of a storage closet, but that could just be a cover—”</p><p>“For a hidden passage.”</p><p>“Exactly. We won’t be able to use our card keys just yet. While we’re there this weekend, Sylvain and Ingrid will be collecting a list of employees with access to the secure areas. We’ll use those for the card keys during the actual heist. This time, though, it’s up to you and me and some ingenuity.”</p><p>That got a spark of interest from him. Anything for a challenge.</p><p>“The tough part will be slipping away as the ‘bride’ and ‘groom’. One of us should be prepared to have a slight breakdown and ask for time alone.”</p><p>He looked at her like she had just asked him to kiss the cheek of everyone there. “I’ll leave that to you.”</p><p>“I thought you would say that,” she said, turning the page to survey Felix’s disguise concepts.</p><p><em>Then why ask?</em> She heard him mumble under his breath.</p><p>“I value your input.” As if to illustrate, she turned the binder for him to get a better look.</p><p>“Doesn’t seem like it.” He sourly traced the outline of deep Faerghan blue pants, black sweater, and sharp jacket over top. They weren’t changing the color of his hair, just making it appear shorter. “Is this what Mercedes has me wearing?”</p><p>“It’s um… I think the design is really good.” The pants were tight enough that he wouldn’t get caught if they had to crawl, but they had been planned with a little give for him to bend and move. The cuffs came down to tighten around the ankles according to current trends.</p><p>He scowled at her. “Keep it in your pants, Byleth.”</p><p>“Is that what you’re upset—?”</p><p>“How are you going to move in this dress anyway?” Felix asked, flipping the page back.</p><p>“This part rips away, and there’s a long slit right here.” She pointed on the drawing, but he wasn’t looking at it. He was looking at her.</p><p>“It does?” His throat was dry. Images ran through his head: Byleth tearing skirts off her waist, Byleth pulling knives out of unforeseen places, Byleth the thief who stole his heart. He drew his eyes upward to see her grinning. A pink blush triggered across his cheeks while he shook his head at her.</p><p> </p><p>— — —</p><p> </p><p>Bomb makers, like master bakers, tend to have a signature recipe. Mercedes might use separate scales to measure her bomb bits versus her baking ingredients, but not separate skill sets. Chemistry, patience, and the ability to see the bigger picture.</p><p>Wiring detonators was another of Mercedes’s many meditative hobbies. Bach tinkled out of her room while she soldered. She preferred Beethoven or the later Romantics for baking, but she would claim to the end of her days that bombs were Baroque.</p><p>Beads of solder on the tip of the hot iron, wire threads twisted into a point, and she let her mind wander…</p><p>All week, Mercedes and Dedue had been working steadily to clear their exit path through Abyss. Progress was a combination of minor explosions, Dedue’s indefatigable mining, and hiring on a dubious character named Balthus. The boastful recruit was a little leery of bounty hunters—who wasn’t, though?—and he just wanted a little pay.</p><p>They were building small bridges for a quick egress across the flooded pathways, and churning up stone as they went. Mercedes had always gotten a thrill from the explosives, but working under Garreg Mach was cutting it a little close even for her taste. Each time she pressed the detonator, her heart sped with the concern that this time the hillside would shudder, a destabilization, a rockslide, someone noticing, someone getting hurt.</p><p>So far, they were lucky. They were cutting through the underground passages, no one had gotten hurt, and their work was going smoothly. As smoothly as a process punctuated by explosions can be, that is.</p><p>There were other complications. Mercedes was hearing a lot of talk about the Adrestian crew. She didn’t ask many questions, but she did listen, and she couldn’t help overhearing concerns about the Death Knight.</p><p>Mercedes had known families. She knew the family of her mother, remembered her younger brother, she had a now-estranged adoptive father, and she knew the crew. The crew was as good as family, and they demanded loyalty.</p><p>But the crew didn’t need to know everything. For example, only Mercedes knew that she made a special box of chocolate treats every month, which she posted in the mail sans return address. No tracking, no receipt.</p><p>She was also the only person to suspect that the Death Knight received a box of chocolates on his doorstep every month. He didn’t know where it came from. He didn’t ask questions—he never really did—but when he scrubbed off his face paint, he ate the chocolates at a cafe table reading existentialist philosophy.</p><p>We all make mistakes, get in over our heads with something that we thought we could handle. It’s not always drugs or sex or robberies or crime or gambling. Sometimes it’s a little darker, a little more sinister.</p><p>Mercedes has read enough ghost stories to look sinister in the face. She used the ghost tales to prepare herself, like a draft of wormwood to innoculate herself against the bitterness of the world. Because she had a brother, and she was worried about him, and she had to believe that whatever dark hole he’d gone down, he could be redeemed.</p><p> </p><p>— — —</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>Addiction narrows a person’s focus to one thing. Love or money, sex or drugs, adrenaline or stasis. It strips them of the ability to provide their own joy. It’s its own rationalization, its own justification.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Life after addiction means refocusing in a world where the filters have been ripped away. Most healers have seen it all, from substance abuse to ideological fixation, from narcissism to love. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>Anyone who’s quit smoking knows the moment that their taste buds change. It takes about two weeks. Then, one meal, it dawns on them that, for such a long time, they had been over-salting everything. And now they can go back to normal, join the normal people, eat normal salt levels.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I’ve also seen the overcorrectors. They feel hurt, fooled by the world while floating in addiction. When they cut the addiction, they cut out everything. The former smoker who never adds salt to their food again. The lover who, when abandoned, hates the person they once loved, never letting them be forgotten, never letting them disappear from their lives.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>The overcorrectors are the most likely to relapse.</em>
</p><p> </p><p>— — —</p><p> </p><p>In its entire windblown and termite-eaten existence, the headquarters had never seen the kind of homemaking that Mercedes and Dedue poured into it that evening.</p><p>He had foraged black trumpet mushrooms during their Abyss caving adventures. Ashe had selected fish from the market, which Dedue brined and glazed with ancho chili peppers. Fresh figs, Byleth’s favorite, were on the table next to Mercedes’s fresh bread. Soft on the inside, crusty on the outside, the kind of bread that crackles to the touch. She caramelized sweet potatoes and Dedue simmered and steamed a vegetable stir fry.</p><p>Even over the pungent smell of the chili-pepper glaze, Dedue could still smell Mercedes’s particular range of scents, aromatic like the sea with lemons and bergamot. She julienned her potatoes in thin precise slices, while he rough-chopped garlic. Her flavors were sweet, subtle, refined, with careful use of fats, while his were sharp and spicy.</p><p>When he offered her a spoon to taste test, she smiled before even looking up at him.</p><p>It was to this homey aroma—with Ashe setting a table, and Sylvain twirling a finished Chalice in his gloved hands, while Ingrid and Annette brainstormed makeup and backstories for their monastery disguises, with Felix training calisthenics in the yard and Byleth on the roof clearing her head—that Dimitri entered the headquarters, long legs stiff from hours in his personal puddle-jumper, hair blown like a 90’s rocker in the mountain wind.</p><p>He was there to prove that he was more than a money sign and bogeyman of the old Blaiddyd regime. Also, he had been invited to dinner.</p><p>Felix followed Dimitri through the door, a cat slinking after someone he definitely doesn’t care anything about. It’s impossible to know what words they shared outside. Perhaps they had fallen into step silently. Perhaps they had called Byleth down from her roof perch. Once they passed into the headquarters, though, their expressions were lighter, calmer. </p><p>Felix whispered something from behind. Dimitri made a sound, something confused and glottal as his eyebrows launched high over one bright blue eye and one black-hole eyepatch. A chuckle lanced from Felix’s throat. Sometimes, the pressure from one grudge can result in the happy accident of completely forgetting another.</p><p>They took to the table like brothers, with laughter that began reserved and soon infected the whole crew. Adrenaline was flooding their conversation. The job was revving up, imminent and real. Another two weeks of hard work and their debts would all fall away.</p><p>“I finished with my challenge lock today,” Ashe said, handing Felix a hand-made metal monstrosity of tumblers and hodge-podge casings. Felix grabbed a lock picking set off the bookshelf. He tucked some bangs behind his ears and began methodically testing the keyhole with each tool.</p><p>“If Ferdinand has easy access, it means Edelgard has easy access, and it means that anything they planned won’t be a secret to the Black Eagles, once Silver Snow is aware of it too…” Byleth mused to Dimitri. She was wearing Felix’s old sweater in the open this time, and there was a soft elegance to the way she was leaning over the table and resting her chin in her palm.</p><p>“I find it unlikely that Silver Snow is hiring people from Edelgard’s court without a plan in mind. All the same, you do have to be careful, none of them want the chalice to be in the hands of Faerghus.” Dimitri spoke pragmatically watching the movement of Felix’s hands on the lock.</p><p>“Which is something I think everyone in this room wants answers about,” Sylvain said, showing off his finished replica of the chalice in the light while Ashe grinned at him with a thumbs up.</p><p>Dimitri toyed with his wording. “They’re afraid that control over ideological relics will allow Faerghus to stake a hegemonic claim over the Kingdom lands.” Although his tone had become more growling as he talked, he was keeping his cool.</p><p>“Would that be the worst thing to happen?” Ingrid asked, gesturing that everyone clear the table, so she could bring out the dishes.</p><p>“I certainly don’t think so. Nonetheless, it’s more important to consider what we want to happen.” Dimitri was still looking at Felix, who was rotating the cumbersome lock in his hands, while three different tools were sticking out of the keyhole. “We should keep our eyes on the ideal.”</p><p>“You keep saying we, but I don’t want to be dragged into any war,” Sylvain said easily. “Let’s all escape to the mountains. We’ll use our big mounds of cash to build a big compound where we can all live.” Felix couldn’t help shifting his eyes to look at Byleth. It sounded like a joke, but only because it was idyllic and too good to be true.</p><p>“Enough, everyone sit at the table.” Mercedes clapped her hands.</p><p>Food was passed around, followed by wine and beer. The table was so laden with Mercedes’s and Dedue’s efforts, it might have been a holiday. They raised a toast: <em>The job begins. To luck and strategy.</em></p><p>Felix’s hand softly brushed Byleth’s thigh beneath the table. The back of his hand moved up and down against her leg as his fork stabbed at the spicy fish. She took a bite of potato and then moved her hand off the table and down her thigh, edging it close to where Felix was touching her. For a moment the sides of their hands brushed.</p><p>Felix recoiled and withdrew his hand back to his own lap before ducking his blushing face into his beer. Byleth returned her attention to where Dedue was explaining the spice mix he used on the fish. She bit into the soft flesh of a fig and nodded attentively as she slid her foot against Felix’s around the chair legs. He didn’t pull away.</p><p>Ancho chilis have heat but no capsaicin. They won’t burn your mouth or compromise your taste buds, but the feeling of fire, the endorphin rush of spice is still enough to have the crew shoveling in bite after bite. They devoured that old Duscur recipe. And to cool themselves off, they ate sweet potatoes rich enough to melt into their mouths.</p><p>“Can I ask you a question, Professor,” Ashe said. “Why did you decide to help Faerghus? You could have gone so many directions.”</p><p>If you want to know how perceptive someone is, pay attention to the questions they ask. Ashe, for his part, never asked the wrong questions.</p><p>Byleth weighed her words in between stabs of potato. “Even if Faerghus decides to do away with its past, it’s the sort of place that will grow something new where the seeds are planted. It’s more desperate than any of the other contenders. Sometimes, you have to be desperate to make a change.”</p><p>“It’s not easy, though,” Ingrid said quietly as she cut some bread to soak up the juices from the fish.</p><p>“Indeed,” Dimitri responded. He had barely touched his place. “That’s why fear drives people to say that it can’t be done.”</p><p>“So,” Byleth said to bring the conversation back to the things they could control. “We have the chalice. We have access to the server. Our disguises are well underway. We’re well-stocked with gadgets and devices now, thanks to Dimitri. Mercedes and Dedue are making headway on our exit strategy. How’s it coming with the key card?” Byleth asked Annette. Under the table, Felix was running a finger up her thigh again, and above the table, Mercedes was glaring at her for bringing up work.</p><p>“I’ll crack the code tonight,” Annette said confidently.</p><p>“When do you sleep?” Ingrid asked, blunt in her happy food coma.</p><p>“Do you sleep?” Ashe asked, ready to believe in anything.</p><p>“Annie has a damaged suprachiasmatic nucleus,” Mercedes said laughing with wine blush in her cheeks. “Oh, it’s fine. Just the part of the brain that controls circadian rhythms, when you sleep and wake up. You should get it checked out sometime, Annie.”</p><p>“Great,” Annette said, breaking the seal on grabbing the first napoleon from the dessert tray. “We’re about to hit pay dirt from this job, and I’ll be spending it to have a neurologist teach my brain when to go to bed? No thanks.” She crunched down on the flaky pastry.</p><p>“Suit yourself,” Mercedes giggled. “Can you please pass me the bread?”</p><p>Byleth grabbed Felix’s fingers under the table. Half-retort, half-affection. She got to hold them for a few moments. Their thumbs brushed, their fingers filled in the gaps between each other before he jerked away.</p><p> </p><p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>
  <span class="small">Forget felileth, this fic is all about Jeritza &amp; Mercedes now.</span>
</p><p>Next Up: "Run Away With Me"</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0010"><h2>10. Run Away With Me</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>In a perfect world, casing the joint would go off without a hitch. This is not that world.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>A disguise is simply another distraction. Short term, it doesn’t change the person, just offers smoke and mirrors to keep someone from looking close enough to identify the underlying forms. It hides the essential lines and shapes, the ever-present bone structure that’s a dead giveaway for a person’s core.</p>
<p>They gave Felix a mustache.</p>
<p>It was the single most absurd part of his disguise, and Byleth couldn’t decide whether she wanted to rip it off his face or tattoo it on to get a good laugh for the rest of her life. But there she was thinking that this job was something permanent again, and not the fulcrum around which everything would change before the crew went their separate ways.</p>
<p>“Stop looking at the mustache,” he grumbled. Obsessively clean-shaven, he feared looking like his father who had worn a thin parenthetical beard to bracket a mouth that always spoke in pleasantries. Needless fear, Felix always looked like Felix, and she would know him anywhere. He had no facade.</p>
<p>Nothing could hide the way he stood, the play of lines around his mouth, his sharp-eyed glares. At times, it was the only comfort she took from this world.</p>
<p>In the headquarter stairway, a small brown package trembled slightly between her hands. She had tied it up with spare ribbons from Mercedes’s collection. “I—” her voice was soft, nervous. It might have been the most ingenious disguise yet because Byleth didn’t get shy and tongue-tied. Her hands didn’t tremble. </p>
<p>“What’s that?” Confusion sent his eyes shifting over Byleth’s disguise.</p>
<p>Byleth’s purple wig was a soft touch. Her eyes were blue and had been outlined so many times in makeup that they were even larger than usual. Whoever this person was in front of him, Felix couldn’t help his protective instincts kicking in.</p>
<p>“A gift for you.” Her voice almost cracked over the words. “For five years of no birthday presents or holiday gifts or everyday gifts... It’s not much at all, though.”</p>
<p>It was a soft mercy when he took the box from her hands. Ribbon untied, he draped it over his arm in one of his calculated gestures and opened the box. Inside, a set of gleaming brass knuckles nestled into black tissue paper.</p>
<p>Elegantly shaped and minimalistic, the bar that went over the palm to protect the hand was one long curved line. The bulges on the knuckles were a polished welding of sinuous metal. Into it she had requested Felix’s stars be engraved. The Crest of Fraldarius, like the tattoo he had never covered up, like his claim to the night sky.</p>
<p>“Five years of missing gifts, and you get me knuckledusters.” Byleth shrugged, that strange sensitive energy a heavy mantle. “This is nice,” he said finally.</p>
<p>She looked upward, basking in his sincerity before that weird, shy energy dragged her feet away again.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>— — —</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>The last time Byleth had been to Garreg Mach Monastery, it had been about a year ago to put flowers on her parents’ graves.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>Twirling a lily between her fingers, she watched a wedding couple on the Grand Bridge that spanned the river. Veil fluttering in the mountain breeze, sunset giving them the perfect golden hour rose-gold glow, every loving gestured was an idiot’s grin in the face of the future. They leaned into each other, making bridges with their held hands and linked arms, while a photographer took shots from each side. She could imagine the sappy smile on the bride’s face, the sheen of pride in the groom’s upright posture.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>For the last time before she went underground, Byleth placed orange lilies on her father’s grave, white on her mother’s. She sat between the two in the tiny Mach graveyard.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>She imagined the spaces of Garreg Mach as a map, blocked into a grid marked with obstacles. The chalice would be difficult to reach, tucked into the most secure areas of the monastery. It would take more than simple burglary or breaking-and-entering. Resolute, she breathed in inspiration from Jeralt’s grave and hatched her plan.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>While she thought, she tugged her golden necklace out from under her shirt. Hanging from it was the engagement ring Felix had given her. She watched the monastery and ran the ring between her fingers.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>Years of naught but whisper and rumor. Late at night after successful jobs, she used to ring him from burner phones. He never picked up. Who knew whether he was still the person she loved? And yet, sitting between Sitri and Jeralt’s graves, hatching the plan that would change her life, she knew she would have no regrets.</em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>— — —</p>
<p> </p>
<p>In a van, disguised for catering and flanked by twin blue motorcycles, the crew rubbed shoulders on their way to the monastery. Mach City was one of those towns that was more difficult to get around in a vehicle than by foot. Street lights conspired with cross walks and the elderly people who were always trying to parallel park in spots hardly large enough for a bicycle. Annette’s driving didn’t help, as their limbs flew at every awkward swerve.</p>
<p>Byleth toyed with the snaps and pieces on the blue dress. It helped to take her mind off the purple wig, the irritation from the blue contacts that were making her eyes water bride-like, and the dense makeup re-contouring her face. She brought out a makeup mirror and pretended to check the outline of her lipstick, while she angled it to look at Felix in the back seat.</p>
<p>They put a brown wig on him, short hair, brown contacts to make his eyes less distinctive with makeup engineered to soften his edges. That Leicestrian look but without their easy smiles. Still, Byleth tilted the mirror back and forth from the wig to the silly mustache, she would know him anywhere. Hopefully, she was the only one.</p>
<p>“Since the keycards aren’t ready until next time…” Annie was rehashing the problem merely to make conversation. “You’re going to have difficulty getting through doors.”</p>
<p>“I have a plan,” Byleth said hoping the words came out with enough confidence to put everyone at ease.</p>
<p>She angled the mirror to see Felix tapping his nerves and adrenaline against the window. Beside him Ashe was nearly vibrating. And it didn’t stop until Annie parked the car in the service lot and they made their way to their various entrances, passing on their way Mercedes and Dedue who were pulling in.</p>
<p>Annie put a blinder on the windshield and began testing her radio signals.</p>
<p>“Frequency one,” came Annie’s voice through the wires in each of their ears.</p>
<p>“Bonnie in,” Byleth whispered into her concealed mic. “Paul and I are crossing the bridge to the chapel. There’s a man waiting for us.”</p>
<p>“Paul in,” Felix said looking at Byleth. The job begun, he was all serious.</p>
<p>“Ashe here,” came Ashe’s nervous whisper. “I’m heading behind Paul and Bonnie to look through the monastery galleries.”</p>
<p>“You’ve got Sylvain,” came the next voice. “Ingrid and I are heading into the galleria to start taking note of all employees.”</p>
<p>“Ingrid here, ready to keep Sylvain in line.”</p>
<p>“Good. Has anyone heard from Dedue and Mercedes?” Byleth asked.</p>
<p>“They’re in the lot with me. I’ll send them on to survey the grounds once they’re wired.”</p>
<p>As they crossed the bridge, they were like a picture out of someone else’s wedding memories. Purple-haired Byleth trailing her blue dress. Felix raising his hand to scratch at his brown wig. Concerned that he would shift it, Byleth grabbed his hand. A show for the wedding planner; a restraint for the nerves.</p>
<p>“Hello,” Byleth called, friendliness perking up the edges of her flat tone. “You must be the wedding planner.”</p>
<p>The man smiled, tight and controlled. “I’m Seteth and I’ll be showing you around the monastery.” Byleth grinned falsely as Felix offered his hand shake. Seteth’s name was in the newspapers right in there with Silver Snow. Withdrawing his hand from the forceful shake of a worthy adversary, he beckoned them inside.</p>
<p>For weeks, Felix had learned the monastery spaces from two-dimension floorplans. Stepping into those spaces now was a surreal experience. He was surrounded by walls that had once been double-lines and meter markers for dimensions. Even the best architect’s floorplans couldn’t relay the tone and texture of an ancient space: thousand-year masonry, cool air permeating high vaulted ceilings, the tinge of a soft-blue light.</p>
<p>The couple fell in beside Seteth and noted the guards at the doors. Mercenaries, as the papers had said. Byleth recognized Thunderstrike Cassandra milling among them.</p>
<p>Seteth directed them through time-wasting galleries full of fakes. The couple pretended to pay attention to the paintings, while they studied the security. Lasers, key passes, CCTV, all a charade to hide that this gallery was full of forgeries. “Your wedding is less than a month from now. That’s soon. You’ve waited until last minute, but we’ll do everything we can to make the planning easy on you.”</p>
<p>“Bonnie here’s a master of planning,” Felix said coolly.</p>
<p>“Oh yes,” Byleth said in honeyed tones. “I’ve been planning this for a very long time.”</p>
<p>“And what made you choose Garreg Mach?” Seteth asked looking at Felix who had taken his hand away from Byleth.</p>
<p>“The art—” he began.</p>
<p>“The location—” Byleth spoke loudly over him.</p>
<p>Seteth raised his eyebrows as he led them past a roped off barrier and into the monastery chapel. The chapel stretched back in wooden pews. At the end of each pew, fragrant floral displays overrode the smell of aged wood and mildew.</p>
<p>“At risk of rambling,” Felix said in a tone that wouldn’t be caught dead rambling. “My family is interested in religious art. Old family from Faerghus.”</p>
<p>“And my family likes the location. They’re adventurous and there’s plenty to do in the mountains.”</p>
<p>They looked at each other for a second, miserable lies burning in both of their contact-occluded eyes: <em>what family?</em></p>
<p>“And you’ve answered our caterer questionnaire without even tasting the offerings…” Seteth said looking dubiously over at them.</p>
<p>In an effort to be less suspicious, Byleth took Felix’s hand again. “We’re not picky.”</p>
<p>“There aren’t too many vegetables on the menu, are there?” Felix asked playing his part petulantly.</p>
<p>“I chose an offering with red meat,” Byleth snapped. She walked up the monastery’s aisle as if taking it for a test drive.</p>
<p>Seteth raised his eyebrows. “We have great chefs. And the wedding cake…”</p>
<p>“We don’t need wedding cake,” Felix said sharply like Seteth was offering poison.</p>
<p>Byleth turned back and stepped on his foot. “What he means is, we have our own baker to make the cake. She’s on the guest list.”</p>
<p>“I see. We did notice an unknown van in the services entrance.” Byleth swallowed hard and nodded to Seteth. “I’ll tell security that they’re with you. Though it’s highly unusual to bring your cake decorator touring—”</p>
<p>“It’s a Garreg Mach themed cake!” Felix said abruptly. “She’s gathering inspiration.”</p>
<p>“I thought you said there wouldn’t be any cake.” Seteth narrowed his eyes, as Byleth shot Felix a look with only one possible meaning: <em>what the fuck?</em></p>
<p>“I just remembered.” Felix picked up a hymnal and feigned deep interest in the scores.</p>
<p>“Besides,” Byleth added. “She’s an old family friend.”</p>
<p>“Really? Which side of the family?” Seteth asked shrewdly.</p>
<p>“She’s actually unrelated,” Felix ground out. “Are there any more decisions for us to make?” He put an arm around Byleth’s shoulder protectively.</p>
<p>“Well,” Seteth said, “The photographer you scheduled is ready for you.” He gestured to a purple-haired woman who flashed them a jittery smile over plastic coffee cup.</p>
<p>Felix steered Byleth away from Seteth. “Perfect,” she said, waving the wedding planning binder around as if it could shield them from suspicion. “Thanks for the tour.”</p>
<p>“He’s on to us,” Felix hissed in her ear while Bernadetta led them to her tripod and set up in the atrium.</p>
<p>“He doesn’t know,” Byleth snapped back.</p>
<p>“Okay, stand at that mark on the ground,” Bernadetta was directing them. “And you can pose however you like.” Felix kept his arm around Byleth and scowled at the camera. She threw on half a fake smile. “Do you two always look like that?” Bernadetta asked timidly.</p>
<p>Their hearts both skipped the same beat. Rumbled disguises could get ugly very quickly. Felix was weighing the idea of fighting their way out, new knuckles warming in his pocket—</p>
<p>“Do you mean my hair color doesn’t look natural?” Byleth spoke quickly. “The dresser absolutely swore that no one would know. You’re an artist, so you probably know about highlights and low lights. I really want it to look good for these photos though—”</p>
<p>Felix had to stomp on his own foot not to roll his eyes.</p>
<p>“No, your hair looks great,” Bernadetta’s tone fluttered more panicked than complimentary. “I mean do you always look like you hate each other? Most engaged couples…smile more? Is this a bad day?”</p>
<p>“No, we’re deeply in love,” Felix said coldly and underscored ‘love’ with a scoff. “Can we just get on with it?”</p>
<p>“Yep,” Byleth corroborated with an overly perky voice. “We can definitely stand to be around each other. We just adore one another.”</p>
<p>“Then do you want to stand closer together?” Bernadetta asked looking through the other side of the viewfinder.</p>
<p>After an awkward shuffle closer, Felix’s arm moved tenderly to brace Byleth’s waist.</p>
<p>“And maybe smile a little?”</p>
<p>Felix scowled. Then raised his head to look at Byleth. He had almost forgotten the purple wig, the blue contacts, and silly makeup. Underneath the theatrical engagement costume was Byleth, his Byleth smiling at him, suppressing laughter at his wig and stupid mustache. He smiled back at her, chuckling slightly.</p>
<p>“Okay, there you go,” Bernadetta said. “Now hold that for a second while I get a good pic.”</p>
<p>Mustachioed Felix could hardly breathe, and purple-haired Byleth kept tucking more silent laughs into the corners of her mouth.</p>
<p>“Okay, nailed it.” The photographer readjusted her focus, only comfortable in her own expertise. “How about a kissing portrait?”</p>
<p>Felix gazed at the ceiling. Byleth followed his eyes. Ah, yes, such nice vaulting in this monastery, truly world-class architecture.</p>
<p>“Professor,” Annette’s voice whispered into her ear piece, “Your time slot is slipping away.” Time to see the rest of the monastery.</p>
<p>“We’ll stick to the hand-holding,” Byleth said dismissively to wrap up the photo session. Felix’s eyes came down from the ceiling, surprised and colored by another unreadable expression. Suddenly, he started breathing heavily. Gulping air. His face was turning red and his chest was heaving like he couldn’t catch his breath.</p>
<p>“Paul?” Byleth asked quietly. Alarm bells rang in her head.</p>
<p>“Is he okay?” Bernadetta’s voice squeaked high with anxiety. This only exacerbated Felix’s breathing.</p>
<p>“I think he’s having a panic attack!” Byleth said, and pulled Felix against her. “Can we have a minute? Can you clear the area?”</p>
<p>“O—Okay, does he need fresh air?”</p>
<p>“I’ll take care of him! Can you just give us space?” She looked into his face. Eyes scrunched closed. Chest heaving like he couldn’t breath. “Are the clothes too tight. Felix? It’s okay, we don’t have to kiss. What do you need, fresh air? Felix?”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>— — —</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“Well I assure you.” The small girl’s green hair was twisted in antiquated spirals and bounced as she spoke animatedly about large fishing banquets. “No one ever gets sick from the food here. We specialize in the fish fresh caught from our stocked pond. River fish can be arranged as well, for those who desire it.” Sylvain, Ingrid, and Ashe watched her eyes twinkle at the monastery’s offerings.</p>
<p>“Please tell me more about saghert and cream dessert,” Ashe said.</p>
<p>“Ah yes,” nostalgia deepened her high-pitched voice as she talked, “we pair it with berries fresh picked from the greenhouse.”</p>
<p>“That sounds divine,” the little pickpocket laughed nervously.</p>
<p>“It truly is,” Flayn tittered. “Though there are a lot of <em>divine</em> things about a Garreg Mach wedding.”</p>
<p>“Gosh, I almost wish this was our wedding,” Sylvain cut in while sweeping Ingrid next to him. She rolled her eyes at him.</p>
<p>“So you are the Best Man and the Maid of Honor?”</p>
<p>“That’s us, but we’ve known each other for a long time.” Ingrid was keeping her peepers above the margin of the menu papers. She suspiciously noted everyone who was suspiciously noting them.</p>
<p>“Oh! This is one of those long engagements, is it?”</p>
<p>“You could say that,” Sylvain laughed.</p>
<p>Flayn took their list of selections and hopped off to check with the chefs. Ingrid walked around clutching a champagne-fluted mimosa. Nobody drinks during a robbery. Loose lips sink ships and all that. Maids of Honor, though, often hold tight to their champagne while straightening notes with pushy wedding coordinators.</p>
<p>Sylvain, as Best Men often do, walked around making jokes, amiable in his preppy loafers. “There’s no way they’re going to pull this off,” Ingrid hissed to him.</p>
<p>“I wouldn’t count them out yet. Romance, like good calligraphy,” he flashed one of the mock-up wedding invitations he had drawn drawn the night before, “is all in the muscle memory.”</p>
<p>“For once, I hope you’re right.”</p>
<p>“Did you ever think about getting married in a place like this, Ingrid?” Ashe asked, notebook out to keep a firm catalog of guards coming and going.</p>
<p>“Me? Hell no. In Galatea, weddings happen in someone’s backyard, DJed by your teenage neighbor under string lights.” She sighed as they peered through the glass-ceilinged galleria.</p>
<p>A full radio theater was going on through their wired headset, while they overheard Bernadetta cajoling Felix and Byleth to smile at each other.</p>
<p>“Are they flirting?” Ingrid asked, as much alarmed by the sounds of close gestures and flighty breaths as the words the couple was saying. “Does that constitute flirting?”</p>
<p>“They’re role-playing getting married,” Sylvain whispered with a chuckle. “I think flirting is encouraged.”</p>
<p>Suddenly, Byleth’s calls became panicked over the headset. “Holy shit, what’s going on?” Felix’s heavy breathing cut in and out over the wires. <em>Can you just give us space?</em> They heard her say.</p>
<p>“Quick, time to guard the doors. Distract anyone heading into the monastery.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>— — —</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Balthus planted his hands on his hips and surveyed their rough-cut underground tunnel. “I reckon we can just about make it all the way through now.” He, Mercedes, and Dedue all agreed to head out to the grounds for a break. “You haven’t seen any bounty hunters around have you? Heard rumors today that the Death Knight has been lurking around.”</p>
<p>“He has?” Mercedes asked perking up suddenly. She wasn’t a subtle person, and Dedue wasn’t a fool. When she perked up, he did too.</p>
<p>“Tall man, gaunt. No face paint this time but the whispers say it’s him.”</p>
<p>“Don’t be concerned, Mercedes. I am here to protect you,” Dedue said, eyes surveying the grounds for a tall thin demon of a man.</p>
<p>“I appreciate that, Dedue.” Mercedes said. “I think I need some more air, though. I’m going to look for the gardens, and will radio you if something comes up.” After all, tall skulking assassins didn’t usually circulate the nucleus of monastery festivities.</p>
<p>Dedue sent a hard look at Mercedes. The lines around his eyes etched deeper as he sought to understand her subtext, but she simply smiled consolingly and walked off.</p>
<p>It’s difficult to say whether she found the Death Knight or he found her in the gazebo garden. It was even more difficult to say whether they were pleased to see each other. Mercedes turned off her mic.</p>
<p>Jeritza’s long blond hair was half-exposed under a hat and pulled back into a thin low ponytail. No facepaint marked him as the Death Knight; however, there was the visible bulk of weapons. He had high cheekbones that fell into gaunt cheeks, was soft around the eyes, and the older he got, the more he looked like their mother.</p>
<p>“Mercedes,” he said quietly. “You should not be here.”</p>
<p>“I would rather you weren’t here, Emile. You can’t be up to anything good.”</p>
<p>“They know that you’re accessing the monastery, and they’re tracking your van.”</p>
<p>“Who is?”</p>
<p>He turned aside, thin calves curving his tall boots like a bird perching for flight. “You already know.”</p>
<p>“You could come back with me, Emile. Stop working with them.”</p>
<p>“You know that is not an option. Dimitri Blaiddyd would stake my head on his spear. I am not the only manhunter in Fodlan.”</p>
<p>“So run away with me.”  Mercedes removed her hand from the pocket of her sweater dress, soft wool, soft hands, soft smile. She reached it out to him.</p>
<p>Jeritza turned, “After everything I’ve done?”</p>
<p>Quiet stretched between him and Mercedes’s hand, as his eyes grew softer, and the young boy he once was peered through them: Emile. Oh, to be born again, another childhood with Mercedes, eating sorbet and braiding long blond hair.</p>
<p>He lifted his hand in its black assassin’s glove. How long had it been since he prayed? Over twenty years. But Mercedes prayed enough for the both of them, pagan prayers of destruction, fire, explosions. Gentle nurturing prayers of hope and peace that came from the bright place.</p>
<p>Emile looked up into Mercedes’s light eyes squinting slightly. What she offered was too bright for him. As he looked up, a shape loomed in the background, broad, tall, silent anger.</p>
<p>Mercedes watched Jeritza recoil and turned slowly to see what was walking behind her.</p>
<p>“Dedue,” she breathed. He had a handgun raised. It looked so small in his grip, she might have mistaken it for a toy but Dedue’s face was deadly serious.</p>
<p>“Mercedes!” Dedue said. Indecision fell heavy in her chest, and in her brief hesitation, she had turned her back too much to the Death Knight. A fluid step forward, and he had grabbed her around the shoulders. Immediately, a naked knife pressed against her carotid artery. Merely a millimeter, between the blade’s 20 degree edge and her blood, was keeping her life inside her skin.</p>
<p>“Emile, no,” she said quietly. The movement of her throat forced his hand to adjust. Holding a knife to the throat was a practiced skill. He could give just enough to not cut her but remain firm as steel.</p>
<p>“Tell him to drop his gun, or I will spill your blood,” he said, eyes on Dedue.</p>
<p>“Emile,” she tried again. Radio silence; Emile had left the building, and Jeritza had taken command. Dedue stalked forward, gun trained on Jeritza’s head. “Don’t!” Mercedes yelled at him, acutely aware of the movement of her throat against the knife. “Please, Dedue, don’t hurt him.”</p>
<p>Dedue gave Mercedes an odd look. Was that pity passing between them? Warm teal irises to the cool blue. <em>Trust me</em>, she was pleading. Dedue’s gun lowered to his side.</p>
<p>Instantly, Jeritza released Mercedes and was running in the opposite direction toward the shadows. Dedue raised his gun again, bracing himself for a single shot that would justify its own ruckus. Suddenly, Mercedes was by his side, moving quicker than she ever did. Her hand gently came up to his arm and together they lowered the weapon.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>— — —</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“Felix, it’s okay,” Byleth was saying, “We don’t have to go through with this if it hurts you.” She was holding him tight to her chest and trying to calm the shuddering. “We’ll plan something else. Felix?”</p>
<p>His voice was quiet, slightly wispy in her ear, but there was no sign of panicking. “Are they gone?”</p>
<p>Over his shoulder her eyes flew wide open. “That was an act?”</p>
<p>“You said to have a breakdown so they’ll leave us alone.”</p>
<p>She punched him in the shoulder. “I was seriously worried about you.”</p>
<p>“<em>Tch</em>, you used to read me better than that.” He smirked and disengaged her other arm from around him, rubbing out the spot where she hit him. Byleth punched hard. “Stop wasting time. We have to find those doors.”</p>
<p>They moved into the side alcoves of the monastery, while Annie switched her recently recorded and looped footage into the security cameras. A few people were still milling the galleries among generic museum guards. “Here’s the door,” Byleth said looking at a nondescript black door with a sleek card reader.</p>
<p>“Keycard alarm but that’s a standard lock,” Felix said slipping on his thin leather gloves.</p>
<p>“The alarm’s tactile, I think.”</p>
<p>“No key, no plan,” Felix hissed.</p>
<p>“I always have a plan. Sylvain,” she said into the mic, “can you hear me?” Sylvain gave a quick affirmative. “Once we set off this alarm, it can’t stop until we’re back out this door. So whatever the guard will do to disable it—we will need a diversion.”</p>
<p>“Roger that, Professor.”</p>
<p>“Now,” Byleth said, looking at Felix. “Lean on the door and pretend to kiss me.”</p>
<p>“That’s the oldest trick in the book. They’ll find us out.”</p>
<p>“We’re covered, remember we’re getting ‘married.’” Her tone was sardonic, but it was hard to forget how natural it had felt holding her for those wedding photos.</p>
<p>He shook his head. Eyes narrowed, his hands grasped her hips and pushed her hard against the door. It only took a second for the alarm claxons to start their clanging, and Felix was already going in to kiss Byleth as she turned her head to the side. He found her false hair, her neck.</p>
<p>Obvious PDA was the game. He made sounds; she made sounds. His lips brushed and skimmed her neck, fake mustache tickling a tiny giggle from between her lips.</p>
<p>“By—Byleth.”</p>
<p>“Don’t use that name.” She leaned her throat closer to him. His eyelashes against her skin sent soft shivers down her spine.</p>
<p>“Fine, Bonnie,” he was breathing into her shoulder.</p>
<p>Sylvain’s voice came quietly across the wires. “They’re making out.”</p>
<p>Ingrid, always ready to correct someone: “They’re <em>pretending</em> to make out.”</p>
<p>“Uh-huh,” Sylvain said, “that sounds like a lot more than pretend.”</p>
<p><em>Was it?</em> Felix’s eyes were huge and startled. He noticed his thumbs unconsciously tracing circles where they held Byleth’s hips. Her mouth almost snagged a kiss at the bottom of his jaw, then thought better of it.</p>
<p>A black-dressed museum guard came around the corner. “Hey! You set off the alarm. Can’t you go do that somewhere else?”</p>
<p>“Oh!” Byleth grinned at the man, as Felix leaned into her. “I’m so sorry! We didn’t notice—we’re just so in love.”</p>
<p>“I mean it, clear out!” The guard rolled his eyes as they began to untangle, then turned to go disable the alarm. </p>
<p>She looked up into Felix’s face, lips trembling slightly. He smirked, behind a blush, hand already pulling lock picks from his pockets. “Move over,” he pushed her aside and in a matter of seconds had the door open.</p>
<p>As they slipped through, their eyes registered a gloomy dark hallway. Alarms continued to clang on the other side of the door, while flashlights from their phones found a door on each side.</p>
<p>“You check that door,” she said, pointing to the right, and pulling on her gloves. “I’ll check this one. We can’t set off any more alarms or we’ll be in big trouble.”</p>
<p>Felix peered at the door in front of him, moving his phone to check for lasers and alarms. “We need the key cards for these.”</p>
<p>“Here,” She pulled two sleek metal gadgets from her bag. “Position this at the crack under the doors. They’ll send out lasers to raytrace and give us a general matrix of the room’s layout. The lasers also get a thermal read, which I hope will help us identify a cold metal vault.”</p>
<p>They waited, eavesdropping through their headsets to hear Ingrid and Sylvain covering for them. “That’s the guard heading toward that console,” Sylvain was saying. Byleth recalled the booth-like guard station in the gallery entrance. “Keep your clothes on, I’ve got this,” Ingrid said. “Hello, hi there!” she called out, presumably to the guard. “Is there a restroom in here?” The muffled guard’s voice: “Sorry ma’am, I need to turn off this alarm.” A panicked pause and then Ingrid’s hysterical voice, “It’s… it’s an emergency! A terrible bathroom emergency!”</p>
<p>Felix paced to the anxious beat of alarms that were as necessary as they were obnoxious. “I wish I could see what’s in there with my own eyes.”</p>
<p>“Guard,” they overheard Sylvain yelling to the poor harried museum security as the alarms continued their clanging. “There’s someone bleeding in the hallway. Hurry, it looks really bad!” They heard a scuffle as hard-heeled shoes smacked the stone floors. “Is someone really bleeding?” Ingrid hissed. “Not yet,” Sylvain said cheekily. “But I can make it happen if we need to.”</p>
<p>“Don’t hurt anyone,” Byleth said sternly into her mic.</p>
<p>“Roger that, Professor,” came three voices over the headset.</p>
<p>Felix’s pacing picked up speed. “This will work,” she said turning to him. “Trust me.”</p>
<p>“I do.” He ignored Byleth’s loud intake of breath and looked at her. “But I would prefer to actually see it.”</p>
<p>They locked eyes. A soft smile reshaped her face, “me too.”</p>
<p>Her phone lit a notification that the laser projections were ready and downloaded to her phone. Byleth spoke into her microphone, “Ashe, make sure we’re clear to exit the door.”</p>
<p>A pause, the sounds of scuffling.</p>
<p>“All clear,” came Ashe’s whisper over the wire. Less than a minute after they slipped back out of the door, the poor museum guard finally made his way to the console and managed to shut off the alarms to overall general applause from gallery goers.</p>
<p>Leaving was almost too easy. They pulled out the same way that they went in, meeting Annie in the van with the two motorcycle escorts. </p>
<p>“So Professor,” Annie was saying on the way back to the headquarters, “I know I wasn’t there and all. But it seemed like that was a little bit of a shit show.”</p>
<p>“There is much to improve on,” Byleth said stoically.</p>
<p><em>Tch</em>, came a scoff from the back seat.</p>
<p>Weddings are a breeding ground of bad luck. Real wedding snags and snares could be celebrated away with champagne and rich foods. But this wasn’t a real wedding, though; it was a job. And when things felt like everything had gone to shit and also too easy at the same time, it made people nervous.</p>
<p>They found Mercedes and Dedue already waiting for them at the headquarters. The crew debriefed in the living room to heated leftovers from the dinner that Dedue and Mercedes had made. Both chefs kept quiet that night, lost in their own thoughts: <em>The Death Knight had said Edelgard knew they were at the monastery</em>; and also, <em>Mercedes had stuck up for him</em>.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>— — —</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Byleth didn’t know she was expecting a knock at her door until it happened. Felix was in the doorway, disguise washed away and damp hair falling down at his shoulders. Apprehensive eyes, somehow combative and a flight-risk at the same time—Felix.</p>
<p>Give it one moment. Inchoate mouth, zero words. Give it another moment. Did he need something?</p>
<p>“I wanted to say goodnight.”</p>
<p>“Goodnight?” she repeated. He looked like he was about to pivot and leave when she finally got her tongue back: “Would you like a nightcap?”</p>
<p>A bottle of red wine on the ground in the middle of monastery floorplans. She was drinking it from a flat-bottomed tumbler since there were no wine glasses in the kitchen. From the bathroom sink, she grabbed another tumbler that had been drying. The solution was so inelegant and efficient, he couldn’t help smiling about it. Why bother with wine glasses when you have access to a highball?</p>
<p>These things she did with confidence. When she looked at him, though, her eyes were slightly red from where the contacts had irritated them, and they were framing a question. What was he looking for?</p>
<p>“Roof,” he said, letting his fingers brush hers as he took the glass out of her hand.</p>
<p>They crawled through the window and out into the night, notching their heels into the broken roof tiles. She looked out onto the lights of Garreg Mach while he settled in beside her and let his shoulder lean softly into hers.</p>
<p>A nervous sip of wine. “What are you thinking about?”</p>
<p>There were right answers: <em>her</em>; <em>them</em>; <em>the heist</em>; hell, she’d even accept <em>the past</em>. There were also wrong answers, too many of them.</p>
<p>“The man in the moon, you can see him tonight.”</p>
<p>“Seriously, Felix?” When he still nodded and looked out into the night, she tilted her head upward from her vantage on Garreg Mach. “There’s no man in the moon. Those are craters and mineral deposits.”</p>
<p>“You really are so unromantic. In Faerghus we say the moon has twelve faces that he switches out. It’s a little like you sometimes, Byleth.”</p>
<p>So Felix wanted to see her romantic face? She’d show him her romantic face.</p>
<p>“The man in the moon, he’s made up of seas. See that big ostentatious one with all the craters,” she traced her hand in the air, “like hair, I guess, and the nose.” She pointed. “It looks like Sylvain in profile. That’s the <em>oceanus procellarum</em>, the ocean of storms.”</p>
<p>Dark hair fell down Felix’s back as he tilted his head upward. A fay shine lit his cheeks in the sparse light as he leaned his shoulder heavily into hers.</p>
<p>“And that one that looks like one of Mercedes’ croissants, that’s the <em>mare tranquillitatis</em>, the sea of tranquility.”</p>
<p>Byleth rested her tumbler of wine onto a stable shingle. Her hand edged toward Felix’s and settled, touching pinky to pinky as they braced themselves toward each other.</p>
<p>“That large one that looks like one of Annette’s spaceship models, that’s the <em>mare imbrium</em>, the sea of showers.”</p>
<p>She slipped slightly and leaned into him, when in some abrupt moment of decision, he took her hand and rubbed his fingers between hers. It was a perfect moment, a chance to narrow all the world down to that one sensation as his thumb drew a curve over the top of her hand.</p>
<p>Felix knew what she was feeling, he had to know. But this wasn’t the right time to sprint to the end. A quiet smile tipped the edges of his lips. Did he really care about the seas on the moon, or was this just a game they were playing?</p>
<p>“Who else is up there, By?”</p>
<p>“That long one that looks like a lance, it reminds me of Dimitri. He holds together so many separate pieces, the <em>mare insularum</em>, sea of islands.”</p>
<p>She let her head drift into the nook of his shoulder. He allowed it, tucking her in closer. </p>
<p>“The <em>mare nubium</em>, sea of clouds is there,” she pointed with the hand Felix wasn’t holding. “Somewhat indistinct, but strong and deep, it reminds me of Ingrid, soaring so high, ambitious and humble all at once.”</p>
<p>His other arm swept behind her back and pulled her against him. It was science above and science below. But that didn’t mean there wasn’t room for romance. Even the researchers who dipped their fingers into the cosmos were liable to create poetry from anything.</p>
<p>Like the legends of Faerghus, Byleth was always looking for meaning. On the face of the moon, in the eyes of the beloved. Events could fling them to opposite ends of the earth, and the question stood, would they again make it back to each other? And if so, did that mean something?</p>
<p>“The sea of vapors, <em>mare vaporum</em>, I think looks like the fish Dedue cooks so often. Mysterious, slightly unknowable, but pleasant.”</p>
<p>His fingers ran up her arm to trace her jaw with his thumb. She closed her eyes momentarily, before opening them again to look back out at the moon.</p>
<p>“And Ashe must be the <em>mare nectaris</em> the sea of nectar, almost shaped like a honeycomb. I don’t know how you managed to find him but that boy is sweet. If I can get him out of this life and on another path…” She was distracted by a finger tracing her lip and running into the corner of her smile. “Well, there you are, the faces of the moon.”</p>
<p>He drifted the hand into her hair next, wrapping its curves against his palm. “What about me? Am I up there?”</p>
<p>“That one, right there, sharp as a cat’s eye, that’s the <em>mare cognitum</em>, the known sea.”</p>
<p>“Worthy to be known. You flatter me. And you? Are you up there?”</p>
<p>Slightly, so slightly, he turned her body toward him, pivoting her feet around on the cracking roof tiles, until she was facing him.</p>
<p>Byleth couldn’t see the sky anymore. Her view was all Felix, dark hair, sharp features, rye-colored eyes astonished at his own actions. “In the corner, far away from everything, the <em>mare crisium</em>, the—”</p>
<p>“Sea of Crises.” He could see her eyes, aurora green, full of lunar seas and lunacy. “A bit dramatic, but…” From their opposite corners of the moon, he drew toward her.</p>
<p>His face made simple adjustments as it tracked its way toward hers. Turning slightly to the side, a pathway to romance one enters obliquely.</p>
<p>Time moved slowly, as if they had seized in their hands the gravity needed to make an event fall into place. Savoring this anticipation, to believe that they were coming home again, to abandon the reality of whether you can ever truly go home.</p>
<p>Felix felt Byleth’s breath puff against his mouth. He was almost there, ready for intimacy to drag him back under love’s tender guillotine. Lips slightly parted.</p>
<p>Just then, a loud racket tore the air. It was coming from the phone in his pocket. The screaming alarm bells of a phone call.</p>
<p>He pulled back, grabbed the phone roughly, and pressed the button to ignore the call. Silence descended across the night.</p>
<p>Byleth didn’t say anything, didn’t laugh, didn’t tuck smiles into the corner of her mouth. She was simply waiting there as if to say, <em>what do I do now? Do we try again with trying again? It was just a phone ringing. Does life really require you to have a backup plan for kissing when your phone rings?</em></p>
<p><em>Shut up,</em> his mind wanted to say to her. <em>It was just a phone ringing. Nothing has changed.</em></p>
<p>Felix leaned forward again, his mouth was now coming quickly toward hers. She felt blood pumping in her ears and the back of her neck prickled.</p>
<p>The phone rang again, loud and clear. Then, there were conflicting noises as if someone was sending him text messages and a dozen notifications at the same time. Felix pulled his head up from the centimeter distance it would have taken to cross the distance to Byleth’s lips.</p>
<p>Byleth’s head bowed, “Answer it. It must be important. I’ll go freshen up.”</p>
<p>She crawled past him and through the window.</p>
<p>In the bathroom mirror, Byleth brushed red wine from her teeth. She examined her makeup to make sure that her mascara wasn’t smudged. Felix wouldn’t care, but she would. She fluffed up her hair, practiced a little smile. She practiced speaking words that only the mirror would know, l-words dripping from her tongue. Grateful, beautiful words of healing.</p>
<p>When she left the mirror, she had to stop herself from running across the room back to Felix. Quick to hoist herself through the window, she was on her hands and knees on the roof, looking for him where he would be waiting for her.</p>
<p>But Felix wasn’t there. He wasn’t there at all.</p>
<p>Her only company on the roof were two half-empty glasses of wine.</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>
  <span class="small">Hi—</span>
  <br/>
  <span class="small">This is the half-way point of this story! I hope you’ve been enjoying it.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span class="small">At this point I need to take a brief break to avoid burnout and regain my excitement for the action-packed chapters coming up. This will most likely be the last update until the new year while I recover my mojo and level up my action-writing skills.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span class="small">Thank you all for reading, and I hope you’re staying healthy and whole in mind and body!</span>
</p>
<p>Up Next: "Who's Hostaging Whom?"</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0011"><h2>11. Who's Hostaging Whom?</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>A deception and a response.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Finally, finally a kiss.</p><p>Felix’s heart was a piston, hydraulic motion accelerating as he leaned his head toward Byleth. Each pump and compression pulsed in his ears, sent blood to burn his cheeks. He pushed closer to Byleth for the kiss that would transmute his circuit-boards into flesh, a cure for five years of heartbreak.</p><p>His phone bellowed through the star-haunted air. The claxons of text messages. Twinning, quadrupling, now sixteen, now two-hundred-and-fifty-six, as the notifications inflated exponentially into the barely-a-centimeter distance between Byleth’s lips and his own.</p><p>Already, Byleth’s voice was coming from too far away: “Answer it. It must be important. I’ll go freshen up.”</p><p>She crawled past him.</p><p>Every time. He hated seeing her walk the fuck away every time. But his phone was still howling at the moon. Missed calls racked up across the screen. Text messages from Ingrid and Ashe flashed away as more were incoming:</p><p>&lt;Sylvain&gt;<br/>byleth is selling us out. where are you now?</p><p>&lt;Annette&gt;<br/>months of messages between Claude and the Professor</p><p>&lt;Sylvain&gt;<br/>answer your phone</p><p>&lt;Ashe&gt;<br/>They’re telling me not to trust the Professor now. What do I do?</p><p>&lt;Annette&gt;<br/>she’s been planning to give him the chalice all along</p><p>Sylvain’s name blared large across the screen. He picked up this time, voice a rough whisper, “What do you mean ‘selling us out?’”</p><p>Weary, tipsy, talking-fast: “Annette was downloading Garreg Mach secure files, and she found some of Byleth’s emails backed up to the server. Felix, Byleth has a detailed plan to turn around and sell Claude the Chalice. It’s cold-blooded, man. We would do the dirty work, then she would leave us in the lurch.” He stopped to catch his breath.</p><p>For a moment Felix said nothing. Then only, “You’re sure?”</p><p>“The emails are clear. That fucking bitch! We want—”</p><p>“Send me the emails.”</p><p>Felix hung up the phone. He launched himself back through the window, feet hitting softly on the floor of Byleth’s room as he sped past her clutter. He had grabbed his go-bag and was out the door before he could consider what the others were doing.</p><p>Stealing through the empty headquarters, dodging the creaky floorboards, seeing no one, he shuddered his way out into the night.</p><p>Backup plans are easy. There’s no scientific formula and anyone who tells you so is an idiot. A good backup gets the job done.</p><p>Hot-wiring Sylvain’s bike was one of those things. It was dirty, it was quick, and it worked.</p><p>It took Felix no time to scour the net for a wiring diagram of the motorbike, which the fanatics had posted all over the sports forums. Felix propped the phone where he could see it and pulled a screwdriver from his toolkit.</p><p>An ignition was simply another lock to pick. Except, its mechanics were charged by the kind of fueled combustion that would blow Felix to grey mist and bone-shrapnel if he wasn’t careful.</p><p>Cold hands, robotic motions, mind whirling in a gyre of rage: he transferred the battery power.</p><p>The need for focus made it easier not to think. He simply didn’t have the RAM to process Sylvain’s stupid voice on the other side of the phone, much less Byleth’s—</p><p>Fuck Byleth.</p><p>All he wanted was to ride off as quickly as he could. </p><p>He didn’t notice Sylvain and the others down the block preparing to pile into the van. He didn’t see Byleth scrambling back onto the roof to find him, having finally steeled herself to explain everything.</p><p>The engine stuttered. Felix sniffed the static-metallic air, so fresh when compared with the mildew stink of the HQ. And then he was speeding through the night-empty streets of Mach City, chased down by a past which was coming full circle to gang up with his present.</p><p> </p><p>— — —</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>The hotel room still smelled of sex mingling with the spice and raw tobacco of Byleth’s perfume. Felix stretched his arms lazily to search for her among the sheets of an empty bed.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>He blinked drowsily against the pillow. His finger traced a merry bite-mark raised on his skin from the night before, right above the Crest of Fraldarius tattooed on his rib. Had Byleth said she would be out early in the morning? Did she mention an errand?</em>
</p><p>
  <em>If so, she would return soon. Hopefully with coffee. He let the drone from the ceiling fan lull him back into sleep.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>When Felix woke for a second time, Byleth was still gone. He shot from between the sheets and looked around the room: her things were missing, as well the scroll they had stolen the day before.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>He grabbed his phone to call her. No ringtone, number disconnected.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Stomach heaving, Felix tugged at his knotted hair as he furiously packed the rest of his things. Byleth wouldn’t leave without telling him. Had someone taken her?</em>
</p><p>
  <em>He ran down to the lobby and had his hair back in a messy bun by the time he was asking the receptionist for a receipt for the room he had just vacated.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“Why?” The woman asked, bored. “It’s already paid for.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“Show me,” Felix had hissed through gritted teeth. The woman looked at the receipt curiously as she handed it from the day’s file.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“Hold on a minute, I need to at least make a copy.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>He tapped his foot, impatient to find whatever code or message Byleth had left him. It would surely tell him where she was or at least where he should meet her.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>He checked the paper under a blacklight for invisible ink. He heated it in case she had written in lemon juice. Eventually, he had to face reality. The only writing on that receipt page, besides Byleth’s signature to notarize it, was in the simple ballpoint from the hotel desk:</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Someday, I hope you can forgive me for this.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Convinced that couldn’t be the real message, he scanned the phrase, translating it and transliterating it. He paired each letter to a dozen different cyphers. Nothing.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>He didn’t hear from her. Not that day, not that week, not that year. And it had taken most of that time for him to stop looking for signs. One year to stop beating himself up about whatever code he had missed that day. One year to believe that wherever she had gone, she didn’t want him to follow.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>She had disappeared. Someone had bought her out, offered her a better price than whatever Felix could. And maybe, the thought had wormed through him like a maggot, wallowing in the necrotic tissue of his heart. Maybe, Byleth had been lying the whole time.</em>
</p><p> </p><p>— — —</p><p> </p><p>Byleth tore through her attic space. She ran down the stairs into Felix’s room to find it bare and abandoned. She rushed across the way into the room Annette barely touched, preferring to snooze in her desk chair in the sunroom. Byleth hurtled down the stairs and through the rest of the rooms.</p><p>No one was around.</p><p>After ripping circles through the living room, she was doubling back to find her phone, when she heard the sound of two vehicles start just outside the HQ.</p><p>Rude, angry messages were blowing up across her screen.</p><p>&lt;Annette&gt;<br/>Professor. I found your email records.<br/>How could you?</p><p>&lt;Ingrid&gt;<br/>We need to talk.</p><p>&lt;Sylvain&gt;<br/>i knew you did it to Felix before,<br/>but I’d never thought you would do it to all of us</p><p>She called Sylvain: “What did you tell Felix?”</p><p>“Only what the rest of us now know. That you’re a double-crossing—”</p><p>“<em>What,”</em>  she growled, “did you tell him?”</p><p>“Everything about your deal with Claude. Your fucking ‘backup plan’ to sell us out. We have all the details.”</p><p>“I didn’t do that, Sylvain. I wouldn’t do that.”</p><p>“All that shit about trust—”</p><p>“Where are you now? You’ve left me wide open.”</p><p>“Yeah. We’ll deal with you later. We have some things to discuss on our own before.”</p><p>“For fucks sake, don’t you understand?” Panic dried her mouth. Her voice emerged sluggishly, tasting metallic, like blood in the throat. “You guys have left me wide open.”</p><p><em>Thieves never have the upperhand,</em> Jeralt’s words sounded in her ears, <em>not even in their own court.</em></p><p>“Open for what? You’re the one who planned to sell us out—” She hung up before Sylvain could finish</p><p> </p><p>— — —</p><p> </p><p>Felix rode the stolen bike to the only familiar public house in Garreg Mach. That fucking jazz club with the Adrestian singers. He took a long pull from a glass of cheap whiskey, inadvisably drunk neat. Under the yellowing bar lights, he scrolled through the threads of emails that Sylvain had forwarded.</p><p><br/>&lt;Byleth to Claude&gt;<br/>…they’re so focused on the heist, no one suspects anything. I’ve devised enough holes and snags to keep them distracted… </p><p>&lt;Claude to Byleth&gt;<br/>…Business aside, my dear, I can’t wait to have you back with me. You can’t imagine how I’ve missed having you around to counter-point my schemes…</p><p>&lt;Byleth to Claude&gt;<br/>…once I deliver the chalice to you, I’ll need to disappear. I can already guess that this crew is going to give me heat for leaving… </p><p>&lt;Claude to Byleth&gt;<br/>…my next email will contain your Mach City drop location and payment routing numbers...</p><p>&lt;Byleth to Claude&gt;<br/>…as for your other question, I don’t think Dimitri suspects that I would sell the chalice elsewhere. And there’s no suspicion from my crew except for Fraldarius for obvious reasons…</p><p><br/>Felix had another drink. The pub door gusted open with a rush of cold air, sending shivers across his back. He swung his head to the door to see the rest of the crew walk in, single-file. This dive—seedy, smoke-filled, and echoing with jazz—was apparently the only place they knew too. </p><p>No bounce buoyed Annette’s steps now, Ingrid’s posture was more rigid than ever, and Sylvain’s expression was fluctuating between that of kicked dog and some angry demon out for revenge. Even Mercedes was subdued, drained of her usual color and sweetness, while Dedue watched the rest, quiet and unreadable as ever.</p><p>Blinded by their need to talk out this latest revelation, they slipped into a booth. They didn’t notice Felix at the far end of the bar. For that alone, he was grateful. He peered back down at his phone.</p><p><br/>&lt;Claude to Byleth&gt;<br/>…are you sure you want to go through with this? It would be a massive blow to all of Faerghus…</p><p>&lt;Byleth to Claude&gt;<br/>…don’t doubt my steel. Faerghus never gave the world anything worth missing…</p><p><br/>A foretaste of oily corn, aftertaste of burnt sugar, the whiskey sent Felix’s thoughts mingling into each other.</p><p> </p><p>— — —</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>Rodrigue’s funeral had been quiet, stoic. Faerghan knights, members of his father’s security lined the pews of the Church of Seiros in Fhirdiad to see a Bishop anoint the casket. The wake would be more lively, Felix knew, but he would be long gone before then.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>A sullen shadow in the back of the church, he avoided the glare from Dimitri’s single eye and slipped out just as the funeral was about to end. He was walking rapidly toward the train station when his phone rang. Unidentified number, but his finger moved automatically for the pickup.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“What?”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“Felix.” Everything from Byleth’s voice to the rhythm of her breathing was still familiar two years after she had walked out on him.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“What do you want?”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“I heard about your dad. I wanted to tell you how sorry I am.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“I don’t care that you’re sorry.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“Felix, was it an Adrestian assassin?”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“Who knows.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“Are you safe?”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“What do you care?”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“I— I’m just really sorry.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Felix snapped the phone shut, cutting off whatever she was going to say next. Had she had been in the church? Was she nearby now?</em>
</p><p>
  <em>He swerved his footsteps into an alleyway. Leaning his back against the stone wall, his hands grasped and covered his face.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Down, he sank, downward against the wall. Messy hot tears were falling into his palm. Mouth open, he pushed out one harsh stinging breath after another. The feeling of weeding out something that had rooted deep within him.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Eyes burning, throat burning, he huddled in the alleyway, silently begging someone—anyone—to come attack him, to try to mug him. Any chance for action, anything that would make him stop crying.</em>
</p><p><br/>— — —</p><p><br/>The HQ was always flimsy. With no one else there, though, it felt as vulnerable as a match-box in the rain. Byleth had her armor on. She strapped herself with knives, tied back her hair, and tucked her favorite stiletto into her high bun. Her gun was locked and loaded. She strapped it to her thigh.</p><p>The house creaked: a ragged grating in her ears. In less than a second, she had her long knife drawn and her eyes searched the shadows.</p><p>She pivoted toward the door, reminding herself to remain calm. So Claude had set her up. Still, that didn’t mean she should be jumping at shadows. <em>Think straight, Byleth,</em> she reminded herself. <em>What’s the backup plan?</em></p><p>There was nothing to it. All she could do was confront Claude and give him a piece of her mind. She automatically fingered the knife in her hair, comforted by its reputation as a charismatic negotiator.</p><p>So Claude knew where her HQ was, and he knew he would find her alone.</p><p>It was time to be underhanded, on the defense, use the terrain of this decrepit, haunted thieves’ den to her advantage. Low ceilings on the stairs, wooden furniture jutting from unexpected places, and the constant and unidentifiable creaking that was currently making Byleth as tightly wound as a mousetrap about to spring.</p><p>Byleth made her way to the sunroom. With windows all around and a glass-paneled internal door, it gave her the perfect vantage to watch as the avenging angel of all her life choices came to claim her.</p><p>He was here. The Confidence Man had arrived.</p><p>A vehicle with a brute engine stopped on the street and idled with its lights off. They weren’t even bothering to park a block away.</p><p>Byleth tightened her grasp on the knife handle and brushed her thigh against the doorframe to feel the slim heft of the gun. From there, she watched the front entrance, listening for the car doors as they opened and shut. Three sets of footsteps pressed the grasses.</p><p>“Here’s the door,” came a voice that was unmistakably Claude. He couldn’t hide it, the slight accent, the smooth tones. It raised the hair on the back of Byleth’s neck.</p><p>She flitted among Annette’s hulking computer rig like a large shadowy moth in the dark sunroom.</p><p>The first knock was heavy-fisted but polite. That would be the muscle.</p><p>When Byleth didn’t answer, the doorknob jiggled. The lock didn’t give. They would try to pick it next, which would give Byleth time to strategize. She checked Annette’s drawers for non-lethal weapons, pepper spray? A taser?</p><p>A thud hit the door, splintering the first layer of wood on the outside.</p><p>Shit.</p><p>They weren’t even attempting finesse. They were just going to break the fucker down. Claude wanted to leave a trace, and that wasn’t a good sign.</p><p>
  <em>Ka-thunk. Chunk. Thud.</em>
</p><p>Screws shot loose from the door’s hinges, as the force of one massive leg, thick as a tree-trunk, kicked it into the wall. A hulking figure with golden hair stood in the doorway. He looked like a photo that was blown up too large for its frame. Wide face carved with smile lines, hair boyishly curling; he would be a laughing giant if only he hadn’t come as part of Claude’s elaborate setup.</p><p>Hilda and Claude followed him through the door, and the rose-gold trio of enemies began to nose around the HQ. The hair on the back of Byleth’s neck froze rigid.</p><p>Watching the angel-headed man in front squint through the lightless house, Byleth took a second to appreciate just how disorienting their HQ must be: the looming shapes of unused furniture; the cat thumping around on the stair landing; the odd smells bombarding from every other corner; and the permanent cobwebs that defied Annette’s dusting.</p><p>Hilda stubbed a toe on the umbrella stand by the door. “What a dump!” she whispered loudly.</p><p>While the intruders were trying to find the lay of the land, Byleth seized her opportunity. Pushing mightily, she shoved the sunroom door outward.</p><p>The glass panes swung out to hit the golden-haired man right in the face. She could hear a crack from his nose accompanying the shattered webbing across the glass pane. The man slammed backward into Hilda who gasped and called out, “Raphael!”</p><p>Byleth slipped from the sunroom staying so close to the walls that she might have been her own shadow. The big guy—Raphael—launched forward at her. His aim missed his mark, teary-eyed from the nasal impact.</p><p>Slipping further along the hallway, Byleth transferred her knife to her off-hand. She prepared to shove her palm into Raphael’s face to exacerbate that nose issue.</p><p>She darted forward. Just then, Hilda swept around the large brawler and rammed her bony elbow into Byleth’s stomach.</p><p>Byleth staggered back. Her eyes watering from the impact, and she was struggling for her breath.</p><p>“Come on, Teach, we have you outnumbered,” Claude said.</p><p>Byleth struck out with her knife to ward them back.</p><p>“I warned you, Professor,” Hilda said, lithely hopping away from the point of Byleth’s blade. “I told you to drop the job.”</p><p>“What have you done, Claude?” Even Byleth’s voice was a razor’s edge.</p><p>Raphael made another grab for her. She sidestepped it and brandished the knife at him. It reflected dim street-lights coming in through the forced-open door.</p><p>“What have I done? The real question is what have you done to make your crew abandon you so easily. You might want to examine that in your leadership style.”</p><p>Byleth leaped behind Raphael and planted her hands on his shoulders. Pushing down, she used her core to lift herself onto his back, where she wrapped her arms around his neck. One hand clutched the wrist of the other to complete a chokehold.</p><p>Rapheal’s wind came short. He leaned back, slamming Byleth into the wall. The impact shocked through her spine.</p><p>She gritted her teeth and held tight. Slowly the hand holding the knife turned in toward Raphael’s neck.</p><p>Again, Raphael lurched backward. Again, Byleth slammed into the wall.</p><p>Her breath pushed out with a wumph of air. And he couldn’t seem to get any air with her arms around his throat. He began to slump, face paling before turning slightly purple.</p><p>“Call him down, Claude,” Byleth threatened.</p><p>Hilda didn’t dare draw closer as long as Byleth had her knife to Raphael’s throat. She backed up to Claude. Meanwhile, face growing more purple with every moment, Raphael slammed Byleth backward again.</p><p>The pain recomposed into a dull, persistent throb. She felt blunted, like hammered putty, and her eyes waxed over. The knife had slipped weakly against Raphael’s throat. It opened a slim cut. A widening stream of Raphael’s blood ran down onto her hands.</p><p>Was her chokehold grip actually becoming more slippery, or was that just her imagination?</p><p>“Enough!” Claude’s voice rang through the pain and panic. He had drawn his gun and was pointing it at Byleth’s head. “Drop the knife, By.”</p><p>Not even aware of releasing it, Byleth heard the knife clatter onto the floor. Raphael went down slowly with Byleth still clinging to his back.</p><p>Immediately Hilda swung forward and cuffed Byleth’s wrists before lifting her off Raphael. Byleth slumped against the wall and stretched the sides of her torso to feel out her aching ribs.</p><p>“Careful, Hilda. She’s only cuffed in the front. She can still get those arms around your neck.”</p><p>“I’d like to see it,” Hilda said menacingly. She poked Raphael’s shoulder. His head dropped to the side and his mouth lolled slightly open. “Who the fuck is gonna carry him out?”</p><p>“I could have sworn I brought some muscle with me,” Claude said side-eyeing her.</p><p>“Don’t look at <em>me</em>. I’m already all sweaty.”</p><p>“So this is your HQ?” Claude wandered through it, unimpressed. “And you tried to do us in before hearing us out.”</p><p>“You broke down the door.” Byleth shrugged and felt for a knife strapped to her inner thigh. “Besides, you wouldn’t believe the night I’ve had, Claude. And I doubt you’re here to make it better." She rattled the chain between her wrists. “So I guess I kicked the hornets' nest with this little job.”</p><p>“You didn’t just <em>kick</em> the hornets' nest, Teach. You wove it into a headdress and wore it into the most contentious and highest security location in Fodlan. And while we’re at it, what are you up to with Fraldarius? We agreed that he should remain in Adrestia, for his own safety.”</p><p>“Gun-point interrogations? I expect more finesse from you.” Byleth tested the range of her breathing. Two seconds of inhaling, and it already felt like someone was sticking a knife between her ribs.</p><p>“Let me try to fill in the blanks then:</p><p>“Step one—” he said, poking his head into the sunroom with Annette’s computer rig, “you steal the chalice. Step two— sell it to Dimitri.” Claude swept his eyes over Sylvain’s crafting station before peering behind them to the living room. “Step three— buy off Felix’s bounty.”</p><p>She knew how all this must have looked to the experienced con man. A plan in shambles. How far they’ve fallen from the merry feast of fresh figs, Duscur spices, sweet pastries, and Felix’s hands toying with hers under the table.</p><p>“Step four— get off-grid. Step happily-fucking-ever-after— you live out the rest of your days with your pissy cat-burglar love of your life. Am I right?”</p><p>“That really strips the plan of its nuance,” she feigned a wounded expression. “You left out the part where I rally a pack of golden-hearted criminals—”</p><p>“Yeah, and where are they now?”</p><p>“Touché,” Centimeter by centimeter, Byleth’s hands were reaching down toward her gun. As they fell to the side of her leg, the cuff-chain clinked.</p><p>“None of that!” Claude said sharply. “Hilda, check her for weapons.”</p><p>Byleth felt the pink-haired enforcer wrest a small knife from her hand. Then, Hilda took her gun before feeling up and down her legs for more knives. There were three. She dug her fingers into Byleth’s boot for another one—</p><p>“Check her chest too.”</p><p>Byleth blushed when Hilda stuck her hand between her breasts: “Please, Professor, it’s nothing I haven’t seen before.”</p><p>“Anything?” Claude asked, pulling Byleth’s favorite stiletto out of her hair himself.</p><p>“Just a necklace with a ring on it.”</p><p>Byleth could see Claude’s eyes cool. He was always so good at acting, right until the moment he wasn’t, and then he was dangerous. “It’s not a bad plan, Teach. The problem is, that Chalice is just too valuable. What made you get Fraldarius out of Adrestia in the first place?”</p><p>Hilda poked her head into the bathroom and came back out with a wet rag. She patted Raphael’s face until he stirred and came around.</p><p>“I found another hit on him. From Faerghus this time.”</p><p>“So you scheme a tendentious heist? It’s chilling to see you desperate. In all the time I’ve known you, I’ve always felt like you’ve had the upperhand on me.”</p><p>“Thieves never have the upperhand, Claude. Hence you selling me to Edelgard. That's your plan, right?”</p><p>Claude didn’t respond.</p><p>While Hilda braced a dizzy Raphael to stand, Claude reached for the chain between Byleth’s cuffs and dragged her up.</p><p>Immediately, she was in motion.</p><p>She jerked her head and crashed it against Claude’s. <em>BAASSSHH:</em> her brain felt like it was wiggling loose in its skull-shell, and twinkling lights were rimming her vision.</p><p>She pushed through, muscles adrenaline-flaring. She wrapped her arms over Claude’s head and brought the cuff-chain to his neck.</p><p>Claude choked. His eyes bulged. He raised his gun hand and fired a warning shot into the ceiling.</p><p>The hallway rang with feedback. The tinnitus aftermath of a shot in the dark. Plaster fell into Byleth’s hair. The gun smoked before her face.</p><p>Claude ducked out from under Byleth’s chokehold.</p><p>She barely had a second to feel the migraine coming on—from the headbutt and the noise and her difficulty breathing that stung like a beehive in her ribs—when Hilda brought a wooden chair crashing down on her head.</p><p>The daughter of the legendary thief crumpled on the ground.</p><p>Hilda recuffed her hands behind her back, and, together, the Leicester crew dragged her out to the car, Raphael popping a handful of painkillers before they were half-way down the lawn.</p><p>“The game can’t end this way…” Byleth muttered, barely conscious, as they closed her into the backseat.</p><p>Stuck between the child-locked door and Raphael taking up two-thirds of the seat. They both looked like they had gotten on the wrong side of a mosh pit or the right side of a bar brawl.</p><p>Byleth’s breath was shallow. Anything deeper was a sharp pain in her ribs.</p><p>Claude’s voice was softening, as she began to lose focus. “Unless you have a way of turning back time…”</p><p>“Time travel is bullshit, Claude,” the car was wobbling around her. She couldn’t look out the window at the moving city around them or she’d puke. “I could have a job for you if you’re game.”</p><p>Claude laughed, but it was hollow and strained. “You realize you’re my hostage, right?”</p><p>“For now,” she said as boldly as she could through shallow gasping. “Are we going all the way to Enbarr?”</p><p>“Maybe, maybe not. Settle in, it’s a long ride either way.”</p><p>Taking the advice at face value, Byleth sank into her soreness: scratchy throat, throbbing head, aching core, every breath murder from her ribs. There was no way to lounge comfortably with her hands behind her back, but the unconsciousness that was coming to claim her didn’t care whether she was comfortable or not.</p><p> </p><p>— — —</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>Her bag packed, Byleth had sat on the edge of the hotel bed and watched Felix sleep. In the pale dawn, she touched his dark hair where it spread across the starched-white pillow.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>She wanted to kiss his forehead. She wanted him to ask her what was wrong, so she would have to spill everything. She would be weak, then, and stay with him. More time. That was all she wanted, so much more time. Yet Claude’s warning weighed heavily on her.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Moving silently with every one of her father’s tricks, Byleth tip-toed from the room.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>She dashed down the hotel hallway with her bag bouncing against her back.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>She authorized the payment from her private account, wrote a miserable apology for Felix to find, and stepped out into the wind. It would be another few hours before Claude’s car picked her up. Each minute was an added temptation to stay.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Byleth kept her face frozen while silent tears rolled down. It was an art she had learned in Fhirdiad, the walk and cry. She kept her head slightly bowed; she wandered on down the street.</em>
</p><p> </p><p>— — —</p><p> </p><p>Felix leaned his elbows heavily on the bar and read through the last email three times. He scanned it for a code, for a cypher, something to add nuance to Byleth’s deception. He counted the words used. He counted the letters.</p><p>Every word made his chest tighten. He wanted to dig his fingernails into the pitted wood of the bartop and clench it to splinters.</p><p>And then he spotted it. The single tell, like a fluttering at the corner of her green-eyed poison smile at the Blackjack table:</p><p><br/>&lt;Byleth to Claude&gt;<br/>…Don’t worry, Claude, my love. We have the upperhand…</p><p>
  <br/>
  <em>“Stop it, stop.” Eight years ago, Byleth had leaned over the narrow table in her hotel room wearing leggings and the baggy tan button-down that once belonged to her dad. “You’re planning like you have the upperhand. You’re good, I get it. But thieves never have the upperhand, and you have to reckon with that.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“Fine.” Felix had said scratching at his head, hair relaxed at his shoulders. “Teach me then.”</em>
</p><p>Only the dealer had the upperhand.</p><p>How many times had he heard Byleth reiterate that point with each recruit they had picked up along the way? The dealer and the house held all the advantages, and Byleth—the Byleth he trusted, the Byleth he loved—always bet against the dealer.</p><p> </p><p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>
  <span class="small">Welcome back—</span>
  <br/>
  <span class="small">I promise you, no Raphaels were harmed in the making of this fic.</span>
</p><p>  <span class="small">Sorry it took me so long to update this! Now that I've binged my favorite neo-noir and stared for hours at my Humphrey Bogart &amp; Lauren Bacall inspo board, it’s time to put this story back in action.</span></p><p>Next Up: “We’ve Been Had”</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0012"><h2>12. We've Been Had</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Edelgard and Hubert roll out the welcome wagon. (Sylvain's chapter)</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em>Let’s talk about crime. A gentleman will say they’re not in it for the money. They’ll spin a tale about Robin Hood justice and wanting to dismantle the system.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>For most, it’s a cycle.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I’ll reduce this to decent-people terms. Cycles are time, money is time, and crime is all a substitute for getting back what you never had in the first place: time.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>When I salivate over the idea of some rich bitch’s safe, I’m begging for the hours. See, the average person is a miserable alchemist, transmuting time into capital. The minutes are pennies. They stuff their hours into suitcases, cash them in for vacation spots by the sea, horde them inside mattresses where they fuck conquests bought on the credit of empty promises.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I’ll tell you like I told my therapist before she dropped me: I had a bad childhood, so I like the idea of stealing other people’s time. Can you blame me?</em>
</p><p> </p><p>— — —</p><p> </p><p>“We should have questioned her before leaving.” Guilt and superstition were the backbone of Ingrid’s rigid posture, even as the drinks kept coming, and the indignant chorus of ‘what nows?’ wasn’t stopping.</p><p>They threw questions across the table like a game of catch. Except everyone was playing ball with their hands in their pockets, because catching a question meant they needed to give an answer. And nobody had any answers to give.</p><p>Appletini Ashe passed to Hot Toddy Mercie: “Who do we trust now?”</p><p>Hot Toddy deflected. A whispered toss to Annie D., “Are you sure those messages are from Claude?” But Annie D. wasn’t paying attention. She was staring into the opaque surface of her Hot Cocoa before throwing off a directionless pitch: “Why would they be uploaded to the Garreg Mach server?”</p><p>Speedball Sylvain dodged the hit. He peered around the table for the pass only to find too many empty chairs. “Where’s Felix?” he asked Shaken-Not-Stirred Ingrid. Shaken-Not-Stirred merely shrugged.</p><p>Straight Gin Dedue pitched one for the table, “Who’s going to tell Dimitri?”</p><p>But it was Appletini Ashe who asked the question that they were all dreading. Because they wanted it so bad. And because it was also the last thing they wanted.</p><p>“Shouldn’t she be coming to find us?”</p><p>In the ringing silence from all members of the crew, the game crumbled around them.</p><p> </p><p>— — —</p><p> </p><p>Raphael’s voice boomed into focus too close to Byleth’s migraine-addled neurons, as she leaned her head between her knees and felt her intestines try to exit her body through the mouth: “She’s puking again.”</p><p>The sounds of thick liquidy retching. The car stunk even with the windows cracked.</p><p>“She can’t blame us for <em>alllll</em> the concussions.” Hilda pressed her nose to the window for fresh air. “I mean she did headbutt you, Claude.”</p><p>“Make sure she doesn’t choke on it,” Claude said, keen eyes peering at them through the rearview mirror.</p><p>Byleth blinked. She had half a second to think about how gently the giant Raphael was holding a wax-lined paper bag up to her face, before she heaved up half a bottle of wine that turned everything red: The miserable dinner of leftovers; a master plan that fell to shit; lies and betrayals on all sides; and that buoyant feeling that had come from Felix holding her so close in the moonlight. It all went into the bag like toxic waste.</p><p>The sun was rising over Adrestian hills and wooded ridges, and Byleth was wishing that she hadn’t woken up, concussion or otherwise. “Water,” she demanded, throat croaking with corrosive stomach acids. “Pain meds.”</p><p>“Think it’ll stay down?” Hilda wrinkled her nose and averted her eyes from the vomit bag, as she handed a water bottle to Raphael.</p><p>Since Byleth’s hands were still cuffed behind, Raphael fed her the pills. Again, those shockingly gently ham-hock hands came toward her face. They didn’t knock her lights back out or cause her any more pain. Instead, they tipped water into her mouth to cool her throat.</p><p>The time passed in scenery. Tall manor houses of the Adrestian aristocracy butted up against rolling hillsides and valley forests. Blushing rosy skies, softer than the crimsons of the Empire uniforms and standards.</p><p>Byleth turned her head slightly, to watch a small city pass by, glass and business. Every time she moved, it brought a new spear of pain across her frontal lobe, and shifting her torso ached with the terrifying reminders of her fractured ribs.</p><p>Raphael hardly looked much better. They had staunched and bandaged the cut she had made on his neck, but fanning from beneath it, she could also make out purpling bruises across his throat.</p><p>“Sorry about that.” She didn’t need to point for him to know that she was talking about the red blood blotting through his bandage.</p><p>“Just a scratch, Professor.” He said kindly.</p><p>Byleth peered around the car uselessly for a backup plan. Her hands were empty, tied. Well, they hadn’t gagged her at least: “That was a sloppy mutiny, Claude. You should hire more muscle.”</p><p>“You must be confused, Teach,” Claude spoke slowly from the driver’s seat. “You’re the one taken in my car.”</p><p>Ah, well maybe talking wasn’t worth the energy.</p><p>She closed her eyes on the scenery, and when she opened them, the sky was gloaming. They stopped at a rest station where Hilda took Byleth to pee. Raphael fed her a granola bar. The shards of honeyed oats were harsh against her teeth.</p><p>Finished eating, she leaned her head on the window. The vibrations made her teeth rattle, but they were a distraction from the hard pressure she was feeling in the back of her throat. This was new, different from the stomach acids that burned their way up. It was a dark sting, like inhaling too much smoke. Something was threatening to tear its way through. And in a moment, she remembered what this sensation was.</p><p>How rare, how fucking sad. She was crying. Saltwater cupped into the surface tension of massive globe-sized tears that poured down her cheeks. And she sniffled and snuffled with them.</p><p>“Teach,” Claude peered back diagonally across the car. “Are you crying?”</p><p>“Sh-sh-shitty day.”</p><p>Which was worse:<br/>
A) That day of uncomfortable car travel (understatement of the century) that left Byleth praying her body would make it through?<br/>
B) The prospect of tomorrow, when she would be tossed into some Adrestian prison?<br/>
C) Yesterday, interrupted right as she felt so close to the love of her life, and yet again, had him ripped from between her hands?<br/>
or D) All of the above.</p><p>“Look,” he breathed. “I know you’re my prisoner. But if you ever need to talk about anything, I’m here for you.”</p><p>“Yeah, Professor,” Hilda perked up as she was twitching Byleth’s confiscated phone in her hand, intimating that not only had she already gone through it while Byleth slept, but there was also a lot to unpack there. “If there’s <em>aaaanything</em> you need to talk about.”</p><p>To illustrate her point, she held the phone in Byleth’s view and began scrolling through messages.</p><p>Byleth should have been worried. That phone contained passwords, access to their secure server, Dimitri’s routing number. But these were all protected—three wrong ten-digit passcodes and the whole thing would lock up tighter than a clam, as every character of text became encrypted with at least six more characters. </p><p>Annie had explained it better, but Byleth couldn’t quite remember with her head spinning, and the tears drying her out, and the tension causing more aches than ever. Besides, if she thought too hard on letters transforming into new symbols winking in and out of a laptop screen, she was sure she would be sick again.</p><p>The thing was, Hilda wasn’t interested in any of that. She liked to dig her long, pink-painted fingernails into the meat that Byleth left unprotected. For example, Byleth’s inbox was full of each member of her crew accusing her of treachery. She couldn’t blame Hilda for being interested. It was high-quality drama.</p><p>“Thanks guys...” <em>I was just hoping to get it in last night with the love of my life before you assholes cock-blocked me and took me hostage.</em> “It means a lot.”</p><p>“Things are rough with Felix, huh?” Hilda poked at the phone. “I was hoping for some aggressive sexting, but all I get is this sad ‘will-they, won’t-they’ crap.”</p><p>“It’s more interesting if you read into it. On the surface, it’s all ‘fuck you.’ But the subtext adds a very emphatic, ‘I want to.’ At least I like to think so.”</p><p>“Whatever gets you through the day, Professor.”</p><p> “We were so close,” Byleth gritted her teeth. It was a bad idea; her head throbbed.</p><p>“Sorry about that,” Hilda said, curling a tendril of pink hair around her pointer finger. Through the rearview mirror, Byleth could tell that she even looked slightly chagrined.</p><p>Claude’s voice was a slow reckoning from behind the driver’s wheel. “You blamed me the last time you lost the love of your life too. You make these plots and schemes hoping for a life that not even you can see yourself living. Do you ever think that maybe it’s not supposed to be this hard?”</p><p>“Nobody fights for the relationships that come easy.”</p><p> </p><p>— — —</p><p> </p><p>“Well Ingrid, I think you may have—against all odds—won the wager. There’s no way he’ll forgive her for this.” Another gross understatement for Byleth’s transgressions: selling their mark right out from under him, again; running off with Claude, again; and for the first time, fucking over their whole crew.</p><p>“The wager? That’s what you’re thinking about now?”</p><p>Sylvain shrugged and scratched a dry stick of art charcoal against his cocktail napkin.</p><p>“Maybe we can go through with the plan anyway?” Ingrid speared a cocktail olive the way one might pin a back-stabbing friend to the end of a lance.</p><p>“The way she’s spilled the whole plan to Claude? We’re sure to get intercepted,” Sylvain said bitterly. His charcoal napkin drawing was taking shape: a gruesome devil in Byleth’s customary lacy tights was reaching inside her own chest and handing over a heart-shaped stack of cash to a well-coiffed imp on a wyvern.</p><p>“Is that supposed to be her soul?” Ashe leaned in against Sylvain’s shoulder, genuinely curious.</p><p>“She should be so lucky,” Sylvain muttered darkly. He added another barbed twist to Byleth’s devil horns and outlined them boldly.</p><p>“Shouldn’t someone else be selling their soul to the devil, though… not the devil selling their soul to a gremlin with a goatee and great hair riding a winged dragon—”</p><p>“It’s a wyvern.”</p><p>“Why is Claude von Riegen riding a wyvern, though?”</p><p>“It’s a medieval symbol for war, and pestilence, and corrupt fucking con artists—”</p><p>“That’s enough,” Ingrid said, bringing the attention back to the main issue: <em>what now?</em></p><p>“Well,” Mercedes began carefully. Her voice was perfectly pitched to rub it in all their faces just how willing she was to see the good in people—even the devil. “We don’t <em>know</em> that Byleth told Claude the whole plan. I mean, Annie, in all of the emails you read, is there ever a point when Byleth actually gives Claude any details?”</p><p>“You know…”</p><p>Annie had ground her teeth flat in the past hour and a half. Her hair was a poofy fucking wreck. The golden eyeshadow that she was wearing for good luck on their heist adventure had been smudged up to her eyebrows. And her eyes had the sunken look of a cave goblin who had been staring into blue-light devices all day, which is exactly what she had been doing.</p><p>“That’s true. I haven’t seen any details of our plan. Just talk about what she and Claude are going to do with it.”</p><p>“Aside from sticking it up their—”</p><p>“Sylvain!” Ingrid snapped.</p><p>He continued spitefully vandalizing his own fairly detailed artwork with obscenities. “It’s not surprising, though, is it? She doesn’t trust us; she doesn’t trust him.”</p><p>“I still think we should have questioned Byleth.”</p><p>Beside Ingrid, Dedue and Mercedes were both nodding. Then they caught each other nodding. They shared a look that was half deep-affection and half woeful-suspicion, stopped nodding abruptly, and peered away from each other.</p><p>Mercedes stood, “You know, I think we could all use some water. Hydration will help us see everything more clearly.”</p><p>Dedue stood with her. There was nothing weird about him following her to the counter, extra hands to carry water glasses.</p><p>“I’d like to talk to you,” he said, as they waited at the counter for the bartender.</p><p>“Oh, I’m sure this puts you in a terribly awkward position, Dedue. What with you answering directly to Dimitri…”</p><p>“Yes, but that is not what I need to talk about. Mercedes, why did we let the Death Knight go?” Mercedes pursed her lips, fiddled with a stack of coasters. “I would like to know if Byleth is not the only double agent in our group.”</p><p>“Don’t read too much into it, Dedue.” She watched her fingers crinkle the cardboard edge of a coaster. “I’m a healer. The goddess granted me this power. I couldn’t stand by and watch you kill him.” Dedue couldn’t completely override his suspicions, as he watched Mercedes carry three glasses of water to the table. In his large hands, he picked up the remaining three and followed.</p><p>“And what’s that?” Ashe was pointing at a new addition to Sylvain’s drawing: a large pointed cock had emerged from Imp Claude and was aiming for the Byleth Devil.</p><p>“Don’t be so noble, Ashe. That’s a penis,” Sylvain began scribbling a penis for Byleth too. After all Medieval devils often had their cocks out.</p><p>“But what’s it symbolize?”</p><p>“It symbolizes a penis… to represent how thoroughly they’re fucking us over.” It sucked that even with all of her obscenities, his picture of Byleth was still kind of hot. Better not show this to Felix or the poor sap would be pining over Devil Byleth too.</p><p>“But seriously, has anyone heard from Felix?”</p><p>Every one of them looked up, as if expecting to see him right there around the corner, drowning his sorrows. And they might have too, had they been looking thirty minutes earlier, but Felix had already left the bar.</p><p>They all turned their heads back to the center of the table, as Ingrid’s phone began to ring seismically against the wood.</p><p> </p><p>— — —</p><p> </p><p>The deeper you traveled into Adrestia, the more pink and hazy the sky became. Factory pollution. There was a price for sprawl and development. Of course, the tourism marketing made a champ’s effort of convincing people that it was part of Adrestia’s natural beauty.</p><p>Rosy light reflected from Edelgard’s base of operations. It appeared to be an office building. Tinted windows and the shadow of square rooms. As soon as Hilda pushed Byleth through the glass doors, however, they found themselves facing another set of steel doors. Not to mention, their feet were walking on cement floors; no friendly office complex had cement floors.</p><p>Claude brushed his hair back and stuck the metal comb into his jacket. He put on a face: Von Reigan, the grinning emissary with his conman’s swagger.</p><p>“It’s nothing personal, Teach.”</p><p>The steel doors made a loud <em>ka-chuuunnnk</em>-ing sound as they unlocked, and who stepped through but Edelgard herself, followed by Hubert, her second in command. They were looking at Byleth the way parents of a seven-year-old look at a bully who has crashed their child’s birthday party: with murderous intent.</p><p>“Claude…” Byleth said softly, eyes fixed on Hubert’s handgun.</p><p>The dark assassin stepped around her and pressed the gun against her neck, purely to emphasize the threat. Then he walked backward three paces and trained in on her heart through her back.</p><p>In that unpleasant formation, they crossed through the doors to find themselves greeted by a banal watercooler with those paper cone cups that tip over whenever someone tries to set them down. Goldilocks Ferdinand was leaning against a desk. His eyes widened, as if trying to get large enough to swallow the whole scene, and according to Byleth’s lip-reading, he mouthed: <em>nobody tells me anything.</em></p><p>Byleth threw one last wild look at Claude. “Claude, think about my offer.”</p><p>He merely stamped an annoyed foot. Then, to exonerate himself from collusion, he said, “You’re going to want to check her for weapons. We started, but I highly doubt we managed to finish the job.” He dumped her possessions onto the desk, including her phone which was still displaying the dramatic details over her love life in text snippets. </p><p>Then waving down Hubert’s weapon, Claude stepped behind Byleth and began unlocking her cuffs. “These are mine,” he was saying, bored.</p><p>As the last moment passed between them, something strange happened. Claude looked like he might be touching Byleth’s hair, some vestigial emotion raw on his face. And as he did so, Byleth felt something hard and pointed jam into her ponytail and ram down against her scalp: <em>I changed my mind,</em> he whispered so softly it might not have been real, <em>now I want to see you give them hell.</em></p><p>Before Edelgard could finish coldly intoning a “Thank you, Claude. This will see your debts paid,” he and Hilda were back out the door.</p><p>Byleth walked forward, peril-instincts feeling for the gun Hubert had trained on her back.</p><p>“Von Reigan’s car has leaving now, Edelgard,” said a woman with long purple hair and a tribal face tattoo from behind a desk loaded with security monitors and a switchboard.</p><p>“Thank you, Petra. Will you search the Professor for weapons and take her to Interrogation Room 1.”</p><p>“That one is having a windows,” Petra reassured Byleth as she led her down the hall.</p><p>One hand at a time, she cuffed Byleth to a chair.</p><p>There was indeed a window, high up and barred. A bird had built its nest between two of the bars and splattered the corner with shit. Through the chalky white patterns, Byleth had a view of that pink-tinged Adrestian sky.</p><p> </p><p>— — —</p><p> </p><p>At first, no one reached for the phone.</p><p>It rang on the table where they could eye it warily like the bomb it was. Ticking between them, no wires to turn it off. It was a bomb that, as far as they were all concerned, had more or less already exploded, opened up some rift into a parallel universe: where Byleth had betrayed them while running her own job; where Felix had gone missing again; where everything they had been working for was blowing up in their faces before they managed to infiltrate the monastery vaults.</p><p>“We should answer it,” someone whispered.</p><p>Before they knew it, everyone was reaching for the phone.</p><p>Six hands knocked each other to pick it up. Ashe jerked back the quickest. Annette missed by a mile, thwarted by a combination of life-long faulty spatial reasoning and abject exhaustion. Mercedes didn’t seem to be aiming for the phone at all. Instead, she grabbed Dedue’s hand, and they both gulped nervously, as his strong fingers led hers under the table and his warm palm wrapped into hers.</p><p>That left Ingrid and Sylvain to wrestle for the phone.</p><p>“Let go!” Ingrid hissed, “This is probably important, and you’re in no shape for diplomacy.”</p><p>“Don’t give us up,” Sylvain said, teeth gritted.</p><p>Ingrid yanked the phone from his hand and sent his elbow skidding across the charcoal drawing, smudging the Devil Byleth from her pointy horns to her flatteringly large breasts. She snapped the phone up to her ear: “Who is this?”</p><p>“The dramatic songstress.”</p><p>“Who?”</p><p>“Ms. Crimson.”</p><p>“Do we have a codename— Ms. Crimson?” Ingrid asked the rest of the table.</p><p>“Oh, for fucks sake, it’s Dorothea.”</p><p><em>Ohhhhh</em>, Ingrid mouthed: <em>Dorothea</em>. All eyes watched her every expression.</p><p>“Ingrid, what is going on? Why in the fuck has Byleth been brought to Edelgard? Are you guys okay?”</p><p>“We’re fine.”</p><p>“That’s what you would have to say if you were taken hostage, though, isn’t it?”</p><p>“We’re not hostages. We’re at that jazz club.” Suddenly remembering that it was there, Ingrid took a sip of her martini.</p><p>“You’re at a club? While The Professor is being brought to Adrestia in chains—” Ingrid spit olive juice, gin, and vermouth all over Sylvain, who looked almost as turned on by the sudden tension and the weird spitting as he did shocked and unamused.</p><p>“What do you mean Byleth’s been taken to Edelgard in chains? We left her at the HQ. You don’t know this yet, but our hacker found proof Byleth was going to betray us.”</p><p>“What proof?”</p><p>“Emails.”</p><p>“Could they have been planted? We do that all the time here. Plant emails from foreign dignitaries. One time a competitor musician planted emails about a venue change so that I would miss a big gig. And people prank Edie with ut all the time. Where did you find these emails anyway?”</p><p>“The Garreg Mach server.”</p><p>“Why would Byleth back sensitive emails up to the Garreg Mach server?”</p><p>“Because she…”</p><p>“Oh, they got you good. And you all had an overly emotional response, right? Because it felt too much like the past, right? Speaking of which, how’s Felix?”</p><p>“He’s missing.”</p><p>“Missing?” Dorothea’s voice sharpened. “Look, I’m certain Byleth wasn’t going to betray you. Claude von Reigan just arrived with her in handcuffs, and Edelgard is setting up her favorite interrogation room, aka prison cell for her. It—it doesn’t look good.”</p><p>The words whirled through Ingrid’s head: <em>It had been a trap. They’d been had. They fell right into it.</em> She remembered Byleth’s face, cold and determined, while declaring her willingness to take the fall for them all if she needed to. Now, they had thought the worst of her and sent her right into the enemy’s grasp.</p><p>“What do you mean by ‘doesn’t look good?’”</p><p>“Edie’s held this grudge for a long time. If Byleth gets away, it’ll be through the back door.”</p><p>“The back door. You mean they’ll kill her?”</p><p>“Ingrid listen,” Dorothea spoke quickly, and Ingrid could hear other voices approaching on the other side of the line. “Someday we all leave. Through. The. Back. Door.”</p><p> </p><p>— — —</p><p> </p><p>Hands cuffed to the arms of a wooden chair, Byleth found it impossible to measure time. Instead, she measured other things:</p><p>The amount of wavy jet-black hair that was escaping a direct plunge into Hubert’s high collar. About 13%. How often he brushed back his long bangs to make eye-contact. Every threat he made.</p><p>The number of silver buttons down the front of his shirt. Five. The frequency at which he rolled or unrolled his shirt sleeves. Once per conversation topic.</p><p>The number of times Hubert’s fingers rubbed together as he pinched powdered mushroom into the tea he shoved at her. Two pinches of shrooms, five times his gloved fingers rubbed.</p><p>“I admit, the view would be better if the window was a little lower,” he said, pointing at the shit-caked window bars, as if Byleth were not a criminal mastermind he had tied to a chair and fed poisonous mushrooms, but instead, a sympathetic architect who had come to advise him on the window placements of his torture chamber.</p><p>“It would still be a view with bars on the windows.”</p><p>“What isn’t, though?” Hubert sighed, and settling into a seat, he kicked a foot up onto the table. He hooked the silver-ringed fastening of a leather strop to the tip of his wing-backed brogue. The leather creaked as he stretched it by extending his toe; meanwhile, he removed a straight razor from his jacket pocket. The assassin began running the blade across the strop with a <em>snick, snick, snick</em>-ing sound.</p><p>When Byleth said nothing, he wiggled the razorblade in her direction: “History, religion, titles—they’re tearing this continent apart. And somehow you’re the catalyst.”</p><p>Byleth willed the blade off course. She prayed for an imperfection in the strop that would allow that razor blade to bury itself in Hubert’s hand, honed edge cutting through muscles and tissue before he even realized it. But Hubert wouldn’t have an imperfect strop. He continued to sharpen the blade.</p><p>“Drink your tea, Professor. I had Ferdinand brew it specially.” Hubert used the tip of the razor to push the teacup even closer. From a small ornamental cup, settled delicately on a small ornamental saucer embossed with the Imperial branding, protruded a neon-green, long garish-looking silicone straw that made the tea accessible while her hands were fettered.</p><p>She grabbed the straw between her teeth. She blew bubbles into the tea, then jabbed it into the cup, causing a small capsize that tipped the liquid over the table.</p><p>“That’s something I’ll only tolerate once,” Hubert said as unfurled his posture, dropping his leg from the tabletop, and topped it off from a matching ornamental pot.</p><p>He left the razor blade on the table inches from where Byleth’s mouth could reach it. A taunt of hope. To even believe that she could get at it. To prove to her what that desperate maneuver would cost: grab the knife and cut a new ribbon into your pretty razor-thin mouth. </p><p>Hubert walked around behind Byleth. He put his hand on her neck and slowly, forcefully pushed her face back down to the straw: “Drink it.”</p><p>She sipped the liquid up. Let the rest fall back through the tube.</p><p>“All of it.”</p><p>Byleth slurped the cup dry. Bitter tea. Foretaste of chewing on grass, then an earthy aftertaste like cave-aged cheese filled her mouth and overpowered the bergamot Ferdinand had thoughtfully prepared for the occasion. The shrooms would take time. The poison, though, was already inching through her veins like a dragon's talons.</p><p>“They say that flavor could ruin even water for you. I’ve found it quite palatable as long as you don’t intend to eat for the rest of the day.”</p><p>As soon as Hubert let up, Byleth began leaning forward and pushing her stomach against the table. Her fractured ribs shrieked pain through her nerve endings. She pushed until she retched, but she couldn’t Heimlich the poison out. </p><p>Hubert recoiled from her. The only bodily fluid he allowed to dirty his hands was red and coppery-smelling. Bile was below his paygrade. “Tell me, what’s more appalling to you: that we have our goals, or the violent means we use to get there?”</p><p>“It’s that, no matter what you say, you aren’t…”</p><p>Byleth watched the outlines blur on the offensive window. The fuzzy edges of the bars seemed to spread out growing wider across the view. Shit-dappled night poured over its edges into the cell.</p><p>“…in control of this. I’ve seen what happens in the power vacuums you Adrestians create.” Byleth watched Hubert’s non-smile tip ever downward into a frown. “I’ve tracked the people…”</p><p>Fangs seemed to be emerging from the corners of Hubert’s mouth. His eyes were turning red, squinting at her. Was that smoke pouring from his jaw? No, she blinked, that couldn’t be.</p><p>“Edelgard’s freedoms…” she shook her head “…turn to ashes and servitude… Those people you’re dealing with…”</p><p>The world shook, went belly-up, full of underwater squiggles, and then Byleth’s head collapsed against her chest.</p><p>“Overdid it,” Hubert said, penning a carbon-black ink dosage note onto the little packet of poison from his breast pocket. He left the room.</p><p>Byleth’s pulse grew sluggish, but her heart continued to beat. Maybe it was a day, maybe it was an hour, that the poison and the hallucinogens would linger through her veins, filtering her world into a madhouse. Only one thing was for sure: it was impossible to measure time.</p><p><em>And maybe that’s the worst part of human hubris anyway,</em> the empty interrogation room seemed to suggest, <em>the belief that time can be measured at all.</em> And the cackling bars on the single shitty window sung down to her about time, how impossible it was to wait out such a great and eroding force that sweeps us up when we’re born and hurls us off our rails.</p><p> </p><p>— — —</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>Time is money? No, my dude, money is time. And let’s face it, some people have way too much of it, and some people just don’t have enough.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>The way you deal goes in phases, Robin Hood.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Phase one:  altruism.</em><br/>
<em>Phase one-point-five:  become jaded.</em><br/>
<em>Phase two:  have a near-death/near-capture/near-prison experience and become altruistic again.</em><br/>
<em>Phase two-point-five:  rack up confetti until your lined pockets have you feeling sinister.</em><br/>
<em>Phase three:  find yourself hanging from some cute chick’s dimple and cue that old altruism theme.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>It’s a slippery alchemical formula. Life into gold. Inspiration into gold. Love into gold. But that’s all misdirection, as The Professor would say. What we’re really looking at here is time.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Trompe l’oeil is for original artists. Forgers don’t fool the eye, they don’t boggle the mind, and they don’t fight their way into secure facilities. Forgers fool the heart. So tell me this: who ever said the heart is secure? It’s defined by leaks, pulses, its opening and closing doorways.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I’d like to say I’ve forged enough alchemical texts to identify when a man becomes a god. I’ll give you a hint: it’s the moment they open the impregnable lock.</em>
</p><p> </p><p>— — —</p><p> </p><p><em>Byleth?</em>  The voice was so close she could imagine they were lying in bed together. A hotel room in Derdriu, perhaps. Plans to spend their sunlight on the canals. <em>By? What are you waiting for?</em></p><p>She sniffed, trying to smell that brackish inlet, but all that came to her nose was the highly astringent fumes of bleaches and cleaning solutions.</p><p>It was impossible to measure time, and perhaps that was the way time was meant to be. When Byleth stopped drooling on herself and managed to raise her head again, the bad trip hadn’t stopped. It had just expanded to consume the entire room.</p><p>She blinked bleary eyes. The figure in front of her wasn’t going away.</p><p>“Felix?” He was in the Adrestian clothes he had worn when she picked him up back at the casino. The long braid falling in front of the left shoulder. His eyes golden like two harvest moons. Their complete insanity was all she could focus on.</p><p><em>Tell me,</em> he said. <em>Tell me what’s going on.</em></p><p>“Duscur was the first landholding that the Blaiddyd’s sold to Cornelia. You saw what happened there, a dystopian nightmare.” She leaned her head forward. “There’s still something missing, a detail I can’t figure out.” All she could see were the brassy buttons of his coat, feathering slightly at the edges as her vision blurred.</p><p>He kneeled in front of her, his braid dropped into her lap. <em>Keep thinking Byleth,</em> those lunatic eyes seemed to say, <em>keep thinking. You’ll figure this out.</em></p><p>“Even if I do, how am I going to make it back after this?”</p><p><em>You’re being dramatic, By.</em> She willed herself to feel his hand rubbing the back of her neck, erasing the taint left by Hubert’s black executioner gloves. His face bent close to hers until it was taking up her entire frame of reference: <em>You’ll acclimate soon. And if you don’t I’ll carry you on my back.</em></p><p>“You’re not really here are you?” This was merely a piece of him, a memory that lived inside of her, injected into her heart as the grout that was holding all her terrible shattered pieces together. “I love you.”</p><p>He lifted from his kneel, kissed the top of her head, <em>I’m not surprised.</em> It could have been the kiss of death or the blessing of dreamless sleep. When she awakened she gained some time of clarity—impossible to know just how long—before the assassin returned to his prey.</p><p> </p><p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>
  <span class="small">Mood board—</span>
  <br/>
  <span class="small">A bibliography of Faustian novels, plus chapter title is a song by The Walkmen—a very stylish tone that reminds me of the black-comedic <em>Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels</em> type crime-vibe.</span>
</p><p>Up Next: "The Woman Who Sold the World"</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0013"><h2>13. The Woman Who Sold the World</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Edelgard's HQ readies the interrogation rooms for their "political guests."</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>content warning: brief mentions of domestic abuse, opioid abuse, and suicidal ideation</p><p>If these are sensitive subjects for you, please avoid the italicized flashbacks.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>With a soft towelette from her bag, Dorothea blotted oil from her face, dabbed away the sweat, wiped herself clean of emotions in the stiflingly bland meeting room.</p><p>How ironic that criminals from all walks would pay catacombs full of ancient treasure merely to be a fly on these white walls. Yet, when the Black Eagles Strike Force met, the world’s tilt was liable to switch directions. New business trends were established dating forward fifteen years. In the instant of a decision being made, some livelihoods would fail while others stayed afloat.</p><p>Dorothea poured hot water into a teacup the size of a thimble. She steeped her Sweet Apple blend and sat beside Petra at the meeting table, pulling her long brown hair over her bare shoulders.</p><p>The mood was shut blinds and fluorescent tubes, one buzzing slightly. Embossed notepads with the Hresvelg Crest littered the table alongside thick and stately pens. No one took them. They committed their assignments to memory. They had learned the hard way how errant papers could find the wrong hands.</p><p>Dorothea peered down at her hands scrunching against the tiny teacup. A strip of pale white bloodlessness surrounded the crimson paint of her nailbeds. Hers were the wrong hands.</p><p>A meeting agenda was already written on the whiteboard:</p><p>1. Border crossings.<br/>
2. Interrogation room preparation and assignments.<br/>
3. Treatment of political guests.<br/>
4. Tea supplies and etiquette of use.<br/>
5. Land acquisition to the North of Arundel.</p><p>Painfully banal.</p><p>Petra looked at Dorothea head-on, brassy and fiery and guileless. “I was having many concerns about the prisoner in Interrogation Room 1 when I was bringing food to her.”</p><p>“It’s not a good idea to be sympathetic to political guests, Petra.” Dorothea shuttered her face.</p><p>The euphemism stung in her mouth: political guest. And for a moment Petra’s eyes flashed as if it was she Dorothea was referring to.</p><p>Some day, Dorothea would spring Petra free. Once the prisoner in Interrogation Room 1 made good on her promise. Dorothea tapped her nails and corrected herself: <em>If, the prisoner in Interrogation Room 1 made good on her promise.</em></p><p>“She was having the look like a wild animal caught in a trap. She wasn’t screaming but her eyes were wide. They couldn’t see me as anything but a predator. She sniffed the food I gave her thinking it was full of poisons.”</p><p>Was Byleth losing herself? Either way, Petra shouldn’t be telling her this. Dorothea was toxic. Dorothea was a poison, and Petra needed to stay away for now. She twined a finger through her hair and tried not to think about the nights she had invited Petra into her hotel room after her show. Their hair braided in more and more imaginative designs, their legs tied up in knots. Dorothea dropped her hands from her hair.</p><p>“It probably was.”</p><p>“She is needing her weight. The food is safe. It is the tea Hubert is giving her that is being harmful.”</p><p>Dorothea caught herself frowning. She shouldn’t have sat next to this woman. She shouldn’t be able to smell her hair and that rich oil she used to condition it, the smell of the forest on her like oakmoss.</p><p>As the others filtered in with a clatter of teacups and a splashing of boiling water, she looked away from Petra.</p><p>The gesture said: <em>You’re too good for all this Petra.</em></p><p>The gesture said: <em>That frightened animal in the trap is our only hope for getting out of this mess.</em></p><p>The gesture said: <em>Why must you smell so nice?</em></p><p>Grim-faced even with her ashen hair down along her shoulders, Edelgard settled into the head of the table. Amethyst eyes scrubbed her Strike Force down like they were sculptures that she had once honed from rudimentary marble with her own tooth and nail. Her pale forehead peeked over steepled fingers. Her thin legs were crossed below the table. She, of all of them, took up a pad of paper and a pen for jotting down notes.</p><p>“We’ll need to start without Caspar,” she began. “I sent him on an important errand. There have been reports about a gang of Faerghans crossing the border.” Those steepled fingers pivoted to point at Dorothea. “They told the border guards that they were part of your backup band. I find that very funny.”</p><p>Dorothea tried to finish her tea—two involuntary gags and a hard swallow. Was Edelgard watching her throat, the tension in her jaw? She would have to say something quickly.</p><p>“How presumptuous.” She mimicked the snide voice of a noble. “Any backup band from Fhirdiad would be decades out of date.”</p><p>“It’s tragic that the Faerghan expatriates see our cultural performers as such easy targets.” Edelgard continued to look at Dorothea shrewdly. “It seems that the band were acquaintances of an old friend of yours.”</p><p>It was a tiny inadequate mercy how cagey Edelgard was being. Dorothea wanted to take Petra aside and tell her: <em>No, darling that isn’t the way at all. I’m anything but an easy target.</em></p><p>“That’s what I get for slumming it in Mach City,” Dorothea said.</p><p>“I suppose so,” Edelgard replied. She scrutinized the jazz singer over a gold-rimmed teacup, like a painting whose brushstrokes she preferred to examine by picking them apart with her nails and crumbling the pigments between her fingers. “We will need to ready the remaining interrogation rooms. I sense an influx of political guests. And speaking of slumming it, Dorothea, I’d like the two of us to sit down after this meeting. You can tell me everything you know about the thief Felix Fraldarius. It seems my intel on this matter is a little outdated.”</p><p>“Naturally, Edie.” Dorothea’s brain felt like it was drying out. So much so that she could hardly pay attention to the rest of what Edelgard was saying about where to locate the new prisoners in their rooms and the proper protocol for interrogating their guests.</p><p> </p><p>— — —</p><p> </p><p>The border crossing into Adrestia was a notoriously tough pickle. Felix had done it a few times. He knew who to pretend to be: Leceistrian, those fuckers get away with everything. He knew where to pretend he was going: Enbarr casinos to blow his cash and increase the empire’s riches. And he struck the perfect balance of surly enough that he was too much hassle to question and just cooperative enough not to need to be detained.</p><p>For another ten miles, he rode the motorcycle down the road with that old familiar sensation of hungry youth out for vengeance. Once the majority of the border commuters had dispersed onto their different highways and exit ramps, he pulled off the road and waited for his mark. From the erratic swerving, popping right and then back to center like syncopated musical beats, he could tell that Annette was at the wheel.</p><p>They had removed the magnetic decal of Mercedes’s fake catering service, which served as their cover for Garreg Mach parking. Otherwise, though, the van tattled on itself with its Garreg Mach plates and registration.</p><p>Felix wondered if they had noticed their tail yet. A small and unassuming black sedan had pulled out after the van during their border crossing. It gave them a few cars lead and followed their every move.</p><p>Felix got back into his seat to tail the tail. The helmet made him feel more incognito than ever, and his motorheart vibrated intensely each mile they drew closer to Byleth’s prison. The wind blew his hair out behind him like bird feathers. He imagined he could take flight, leaning forward, propelled on the rubber-burning wheels. The motion was a state of flow as his mind, body, and situational awareness became almost meditative.</p><p>It was a long ride down South through the night. The shield-shaped constellation of Fraldarius was disappearing to the North, guiding him on to the job he was destined for. The adrenaline speared his petty concerns of betrayal and foolishness, the way the mongoose bites the cobra. Instinctively, he knew that Byleth was not safe, and he had no choice but to fly toward her.</p><p> </p><p>— — —</p><p> </p><p>The areas surrounding Byleth’s eyes were growing darker from the wormwood. Each pump of her very necessary pulsing heart was leeching the poison to her organs. The aurora-green of her hair was fading into a dull blue. She laughed easily now, her fake steel-backed grifter’s smiles were blending into her fun-loving and bashful grins. From the mix came something new: madness.</p><p>Hubert flicked back coal-black hair and passed her the teacup across the table. Byleth laughed. She laughed and drank her bitterness, final dregs falling to swirl the bottom of the cup.</p><p>“What is Blaiddyd planning to do with the chalice?”</p><p>“Eat cereal from it.”</p><p>A black leather glove cracked against her vision. She seemed to feel the slap second-hand. Stars and sparks and floaters overlaid the already muddled view of Interrogation Room 1, where a hallucinated nineteen-year-old Felix with his hair tied up in a bun had been sword-fighting with a present-day Felix in his workout clothes. The younger Felix turned to look at Byleth in pity. The older Felix took the opening, stabbing the younger Felix in the shoulder.</p><p>“You’re right,” she said spitting blood at Hubert who wrinkled his nose at the pink glob of saliva on the table. “He’s more of a muesli person.”</p><p>“Try again,” Hubert said coldly.</p><p>“Maybe he’ll fill it with cognac and have himself a rowdy night staring at his dad’s portrait.”</p><p>Byleth laughed; her grip on the chair was weak. Her eyes kept tracking something in the corner of the room, something that wasn’t there. Felix was shirtless and laughing with her, wild-eyed and radical like he had been during their last heist together. She watched the Crest of Fraldarius tattoo blare blue on his side. </p><p>“Do you think the dead care anything about any of this? Do you ever wonder about those you put in the ground?”</p><p>Byleth could feel the poison. Her teeth were loosening, with a push of her tongue she could rattle them against each other like so many tiny dice on the craps table. Her brain was a tiny raisin rolling around in her skull, and every time she caught word of something from the outside of her tiny interrogation room, it went spinning around her mind like the little ball of destiny in the roulette wheel.</p><p>But she wasn't alone.</p><p>As if on cue, the dead came for her. The Felixes sank back into the corner of the room, crouching against the wall. Her father stepped forward, middle-aged and muscular in his orange button-down. He held up a hand and circled his pointer finger in the air to say, <em>wrap it up.</em></p><p>Hubert looked at her distastefully, watched her eyes straining at nothing, corner of the room dust bunnies. “You’re cracking, Professor. I’d hoped you would last a bit longer.”</p><p>“Destabilize you, destabilize the church, destabilize everything. That what you want to hear? If the church has no more relics, it will have to admit that it’s a sham and…”</p><p>“What’s he going to do with it, Byleth?”</p><p>“Drink the blood of saints like any good Seiros-fearing man. If Edelgard weren’t so owned, she’d see—”</p><p>“Oh, you’ll have plenty of time to talk to Edelgard about what she sees.”</p><p>“Good, send her my way.” Jeralt was looking at Byleth crossly. “You have to go now, Hubert. I have to talk to my dad.”</p><p>Hubert scowled, but he had limited patience for conversing with the insane. Once the humor wore off, the tedium was deadly.</p><p>Jeralt paced the room in the way that Byleth wished she could: <em>Looks like it’s come to this, kid. What was it you said to me years ago? ‘One room, locked from the outside, and the walls begin closing in.’</em></p><p>“It’s those Adrestian fuckers who did you in.”</p><p>He stopped pacing, rubbed his hand into his hair. <em>I hate to see you like this.</em></p><p>“You’re dead.”</p><p>
  <em>But you’re not, and this better not be how you go. Is that the chair they put you in, Kid? That flimsy thing? And they have you cuffed at the joints…</em>
</p><p>“What are you saying, dad?”</p><p>
  <em>I’d say the metal of those cuffs is made out of a lot sturdier stuff than that weak chair. And you, you can handle this. You’re made of the strongest stuff I know.</em>
</p><p> </p><p>— — —</p><p> </p><p>As soon as they turned off the main highway with its broad bridges that would lead down to Enbarr, the road became tight and claustrophobic. This second shift took them further south through wooded hills toward Hresvelg. Annette steered the way between road shoulders dense with deciduous trees. Branches, ravaged by the late Autumn, held onto their last foliage. Leaves scuttled over the roadways, animated by the oh so many ghosts of the past year.</p><p>Beside the sheltered road ran a small river searching for a way out to sea, past Hresvelg’s manors, onward to the coasts and boardwalks. But their destination wasn’t the city. They would be stopping in what Annette’s GPS told her was the middle of nowhere, the coordinates Dorothea had given them for the center of Edelgard’s security.</p><p>Cruising the two-lane road made it impossible to ignore one crucial detail: they were being followed. A black car was shadowing every slight swerve of Annette’s inconsistent motor control.</p><p>“Do you see that?” Annette asked Ashe in the passenger seat. He remained the only other person awake in the van, as he read one of his sci-fi novels in its thick faux-leather binding. “That can’t be a coincidence.” </p><p>“They’re following us?” He peeked into the side mirror, but the tinted windows of the black car shadowing them remained inscrutable.</p><p>They shared a look. Her misty gray eyes silently screaming. His melon-tea green tacitly panicking.</p><p>A bump in the road.</p><p>One of the front wheels had just fallen off the asphalt. Annie’s attention sparked back to the windshield as she swerved the van back in between the lines, and through the rear she watched their tail close the distance between them again.</p><p>Ashe twisted around to peer into the back of the van. Mercedes was asleep with her head on Dedue’s shoulder. Her long blond hair was falling over him like a river of wheat across his gray and black clothes, and he had wrapped his vibrant blue and orange patterned scarf around her for warmth. Dedue’s head leaned against the window, eyes closed, but Ashe knew he was merely one blink from awareness.</p><p>Further in the back, where camp seats were pulled down among the fake catering equipment, Sylvain and Ingrid sprawled on separate sides of the van. They leaned their heads on opposite sides. Ingrid’s long legs were bent up and knocking into Sylvain’s, and his mirrored hers.</p><p>It seemed so peaceful there in the car, as their tail drew closer to their bumper. They were winding a small hill.</p><p>Rounding hills was always like taking a breath. Annie would draw all the air into her lungs until she couldn’t anymore. The claustrophobia, the narrowed vision, not knowing exactly where the road was leading until she made it to the other side. Then there would be a relief when she let out the breath and the vista opened itself back up and—</p><p>Motherfucker.</p><p>There was no wide-open vista, no fresh rolling hills. On the other side of this turn, a hulking black SUV was blocking both lanes in the middle of the road.</p><p>“Shit fucking shit shit shit.” Annette pressed all her weight into the brake pedal and clutched the wheel to keep from swerving.</p><p>The force of the braking threw Ashe against the dashboard—<em>ccrunchh</em>, his face felt flattened, his vision swimming. The blood began with a gush.</p><p>The car behind them eased up as they burned rubber into a stop that brought their bumper barely feet from the parked SUV. </p><p>The van clamored with the screeches of the formerly sleeping. Jolted, loud, fearful. “We shouldn’t be stopping for another hour or two,” Ingrid called. “What’s going on?”</p><p>Mercedes’s sixth sense for blood jerked her into action. Immediately, she leaned forward and began dabbing Ashe with the scarf.</p><p>Four figures stepped out of the black car barricade. Four more figures stepped out of the car that was tailing them. Guns up and trained on the van.</p><p>“Come out!” The leader was a shorter man. His pastel-blue hair was bright against the dark security uniform padded to block bullets. He strode forward jauntily, despite the seriousness of the situation. “Drop all weapons. We have you surrounded.”</p><p>Still muttering a string of curses, Annette slipped down into the van floor and huddled among the pedals. The door opened on her, letting in the kind of garishly bright light that a nocturnal creature like her was always dodging away from.</p><p>Two pairs of hands reached in—roughly, the way a young child reaches for their pet gerbil when they’ve backed it into a corner—and, grasping forcefully, they pulled her from her hidey-hole. She went limp as they tied her up, not knowing how to move or what to do. There was a reason, she thought as the cuffs closed over her wrists, that people like her didn’t go into the field.</p><p><br/>
— —<br/>
<em>While the security guard drags her away from her father’s office, Annette is a cat that doesn’t like to be carried. Nails clawing, breath hissing, feet stiff and kicking out.</em></p><p>
  <em>She had stood in his office, just behind the lobby of the Fhirdiad Security Force, and watched a projection of her own face winking from the hacked screen of his computer. She’d raised her hands: hey dad, look what I can do. Ruddy-faced, ruddy-haired, ruddy avoidant, he’d turned his back as Fhirdiad knights dragged her from the premises.</em>
</p><p>— —</p><p><br/>
Mercedes mouthed an expressive “sorry” to Dedue, as she pressed his scarf against Ashe’s swelling nose. Her cold hands brushed back Ashe’s hair and tested his forehead for knots and fractures. All the while, figures in black were surrounding the van.</p><p>Dedue opened his door, intending to cover them. That boisterous, teal-haired man was upon him faster than ants on honey, hollering “Step away,” as Dedue blocked the opening.</p><p>The large man didn’t speak. Before their eyes, he seemed to grow greater and broader, pale hair reaching into the sky.</p><p>“Easy,” the teal-haired man said. “I’d hate to have to hurt you. I’m just supposed to bring you in.”</p><p>Dedue’s pale eyebrows shot up in an unexpected crack of expression: <em>try it.</em></p><p>The others watched from behind. A punch barely seemed to land on him. Slamming him back against the car did nothing. He hardly fought back. It was simple enough for him to stand his ground, while four guards pinged off him like flies.</p><p>It wasn’t the crack across his back that took him down. And it wasn’t the punching he took on his shoulders and chest. Nor was it the arms that were grabbing him trying to get him in cuffs.</p><p>No, it was a blow of the butt of a gun to the kidney and a kick behind his knees that dropped him. And once he fell, he fell hard. Mouth to the ground, Dedue smelled the earth.</p><p><br/>
— —<br/>
<em>Duscur is a bitter grit in his teeth as he goes down. Dedue had been born large, but it was impossible to be big enough to block all the slings and arrows coming toward his home. They wanted to tear it down from the foundation, to rebuild it with a veneer.</em></p><p>
  <em>A bomb goes off down the street. He can hear it, never stops hearing it ring in his ears. He can feel its heat, taste its metallic tang in the cool sea breeze. They’re there with their bombs to tarnish the bright foliage of his home. The soldier who had bashed his head stands above. Another bomb goes off in the distance. He no longer hears running footsteps from his father’s forge, no longer hears his family calling.</em>
</p><p>— —</p><p><br/>
Ashe watched Dedue fall, and instead of getting bigger in his space the way his companion had, he crouched. His legs darted out at the assailants’ attacks. His hands jabbed the way Felix had taught him when sparring in the Adrestian gyms.</p><p>In that moment, Ashe felt like he could dodge bullets. He was weaving between the guards facing him, nanoseconds of dancing with each of them: a step forward and a step back, a dodge and a block. One of the guards got Ashe’s jab square under his jaw. As another guard rushed in, the silver-haired speed devil poked the wind from his adams apple. How many more were coming to a kneel before Ashe, as he hit each pressure point?—</p><p>And yet, everyone has their blind spots. From behind, the long, slow butt of a gun crashed into his head. And Ashe reeled into darkness.</p><p><br/>
— —<br/>
<em>The first time Ashe is picked up for pick-pocketing, it isn’t a vendetta or even necessary. His magpie-like need to preserve something that might otherwise be lost in time is what does him in. In this case, it’s a book, a rare bit of romance poached from the manor of the Honorable Judge Lonato.</em></p><p>
  <em>He is hanging upside down to reach through the window to the book on the desk when he’s apprehended. The house guards knock him from the ledge, dropping him the way one knocks down a nest of wasps. His head hits the window ledge before the ground, and it’s the hardest hit Ashe had felt in his life.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“Community service,” proclaims the Honorable Judge Lonato at the trial, as Ashe’s eyes fill with grateful tears.</em>
</p><p>— —</p><p><br/>
In the very back of the van where black shadows loiter outside the door about to pry it open, Sylvain rocked around and grabbed Ingrid’s knee: “Ing, in case we don’t make it out of this, there’s something I need to tell you...”</p><p>She hissed, eyed the shadows outside, picked up her gun—locked and loaded: “Say it quick.”</p><p>“Ever since I found you strung out on that mattress in Galatea—”</p><p>“—Sylvain, that was fifteen years ago.”</p><p>“Yeah.” Gun in hand, safety on, he scraped back a flattened thicket of hair. “That’s fifteen years, I’ve been in love with you.”</p><p>She slapped him. “Any port in the storm, huh?”</p><p>“I’m trying to say something here.”</p><p>“Do me a favor and don’t!”</p><p>The back door opened. By instinct, both Ingrid and Sylvain trained their handguns at their assailants.</p><p>“So you don’t feel the same way about me?”</p><p>“I wouldn’t feel that way about you if you were the last man on earth.”</p><p>“Excuse me,” the security guard was saying. “I need you to drop your guns and put on these handcuffs.”</p><p>“That’s what she—”</p><p>“Sylvain!”</p><p>“Drop the weapons!” the guard was becoming increasingly agitated. Face turning red, he pointed his own handgun at them.</p><p>“We’re in the middle of something here.” Sylvain petulantly checked the safety was on his gun and tossed it to the guard’s feet.</p><p>“It’s nothing.” Ingrid’s voice was acid, as she too threw down her weapon and scowled at Sylvain.</p><p>“It’s not nothing, Ingrid. It’s my heart, my whole heart—”</p><p>“Can you shut him up?” Ingrid appealed to the security guard.</p><p>As if taking an order, a baton came up against Sylvain’s head. He dipped low in a curtain call, and the lights went out.</p><p><br/>
— —<br/>
<em>Sylvain’s brother is tall, broad, and cruel. The kind of man with his head perpetually in a wasps’ nest. Except, in this case, the wasps are a den of cocaine dealers, and Sylvain with his ‘golden boy’ status—despite a tendency toward unapologetic philandering—was the skin he stung.</em></p><p>
  <em>It’s winter, and Miklan’s hands are rough and chapped. His breath is foul, laughing cloud-puffing breaths into the cold air, as he tosses his brother down down down. Sylvain’s fingers, now so precious for art, then tools of necessity and survival, scramble at the cold stone side of the well. They rip themselves to find purchase, while the cold takes him down, and the only light narrows to one moon-sized globe of survival, surrounded by the stone well closing in.</em>
</p><p>— —</p><p><br/>
They had dragged Dedue over the ground. They had dragged him with his own legs barely beneath him. It had taken two interlocked sets of handcuffs to account for his size.</p><p>They cuffed her friends and tied them up and pulled their bodies to their car. Swollen meat, bruised skin. Blood running down from Ashe’s forehead, so soon after Mercedes had staunched his gushing nose.</p><p>She would have to clean them up. When they all made it out of this, she would sew their skin shut, give them medicine to help them sleep. She would mend their bones and moisturize the new scars that would form around their lacerations.</p><p>Mercedes was standing as everyone else fell. She put her hands up in the air and behind her head. They took her quietly. At worst, snagging a rip in the sleeve of her dress when the cuffs came around her wrists.</p><p><br/>
— —<br/>
<em>Mercedes has one bloody nose after another. Every time it rains, it would open back up. Cuts barely healed. A moist day in the pharmacy tending patients and the blood would flow like it wasn’t supposed to. She thinks that when he hit her, it had broken something that would not mend. The things that do not mend aren’t just superstition. They are everywhere in this world. Sometimes, Mercie wonders if she’s one of them.</em></p><p>— —</p><p><br/>
Ingrid’s eyes blazed wide. Anger and hatred. She hadn’t meant for them to actually hit Sylvain. Only she hit Sylvain. She hadn’t meant for…</p><p>Before she knew it, she was reaching into the back of the van for a metal bar from the catering scaffolding. The security group saw their chance, saw the need to put her down before things got too violent.</p><p>A bit of percussion and Ingrid felt something sharp and brutal pierce her. A bullet? No. It hit in one point, barely wrecked the skin and veins. A dart, a tranq. And the feeling was familiar—too familiar—as she sank.</p><p><br/>
— —<br/>
<em>A week after Glenn’s death. Ingrid gets so high she blisses herself pre-linguistic. It’s brain death. Nonexistence. She can walk through fire. What did Milton say about Angels? It’s better without bodies.</em></p><p>
  <em>They don’t know where the pills keep coming from. She’s frugal, she cleans out her broken possessions, she buries the dead. But even empty corners and furniture-free rooms can hold prescription bottles.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>They draw an ice bath that shocks every nerve in her system. Hello, the nerves are minnows that nibble at her threads of sanity. It’s been so long since she felt them. Even in Faerghus winter, it’s been so long since she shivered.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>She is breaking, slowly like a crack in glass made when the body of a moth runs into it, on a day when it’s too cold to breathe outside without spit freezing to her throat. The lepidopterists of this world know that thud of insect body on glass-pane. They get off on it, thrilled glint in the eye.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>But there’s no one to blame. Not even Dimitri, not even Duscar.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>People are born to die. The real trouble is that they’ve found a way to live in the meantime. The real trouble is getting attached to life.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>The ice melts, driving the temperature lower than when they first slashed the stomach of those ice bags and poured it in. Ingrid shivers more than ever.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>No bug hunter has put her where she is. She has pinned herself to the wall. She is the bug and the scientist and the observer and the god that could end this shivering if she allowed herself. It should be empowering. But there’s no power in the detox because there’s no power in standing by when someone dies.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>She leaves the bathwater. She drinks the ice chips. She gets clean. For three months she is. Then she goes off the rails again, like it’s her seasonal cycle. The chrysalis she’s using to breed whatever notion of Ingrid she will be born from.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“Father, please,” she says a year later when the next suitor rolls in, “Shouldn’t you get a free pass when your first fiance goes six feet under?” He thinks she is joking. She has a medkit in her bag full of tampons and Vicodin.</em>
</p><p> </p><p>— — —</p><p> </p><p>
  <strong>Interrogation Room 1</strong>
</p><p>Byleth pried the steel of her handcuffs into the jointer of the armrest and its support. She wiggled her wrist for leverage. Time was impossible. Time did not exist. It felt like hours of jiggling her arm before the screws slowly stripped from the wood. Success was a creaking sound, setting her teeth on edge with each millimeter that she loosened.</p><p>Nothing had changed in the interrogation room. Yet, everything felt different. Hubert had laid off the heavy doses of shroom tea, and Byleth could see straight again, which wasn’t a marked improvement.</p><p>The door <em>thuunnnkked</em> with the turning of the deadbolt. Byleth froze. Her tired hands seized the creaky chair arms, and she shifted her forearms to cover the damage.</p><p>Edelgard and Hubert marched into the room. In her large red dress segmented to look like plate-mail, the tiny woman’s oversized presence was as wraith-like as it was sincere. And Hubert was dressed in his funerary best, complete with a purple pocket square and bow tie.</p><p>Byleth tracked their expressions. Edelgard’s careful consideration ranged in levels from 2 to 10. Two was willing to hear you out. Ten meant it was time to start praying.</p><p>Currently, she was measuring Byleth with consideration level 3: “Professor, I almost did a spit take when I heard you had taken on such a desperate heist. And for Dimitri, no less, but then your relationship to Dimitri is nothing new is it?”</p><p>Byleth raised her eyebrows. “You, Edelgard, spit take? But you’re always so composed.”</p><p>“Of course, the extent of your dealings with Dimitri is something of a mystery. You must have begun working with him when your accomplice Fraldarius let you in on his powerful Faerghan connections?”</p><p>Byleth didn’t even twitch her lips.</p><p>With a tilt of her head and a cold cluck, the consideration level raised to a 5. “I want an answer to that, Professor.”</p><p>Byleth felt rather than saw Hubert behind her, surely toying with that razor of his as he’d been doing every time he entered Byleth’s interrogation room.</p><p>“Yes, Dimitri and I have been working together for over seven years.”</p><p>“That settles it then,” Edelgard said with the relief of someone taking a single tab of ibuprofen when simultaneously lighting themselves on fire. “Where did all your money go, Professor?”</p><p>Byleth closed her eyes, almost wishing for a visitation from the shrooms. This would be a good time for Jeralt to pop up with some of his trademark left-handed wisdom. She might even relish a troop of Felixes sword-fighting throughout the room.</p><p>But in the end, there was only her. When she strained, all she could see was her own eyelashes, the tip of her nose. She heard her own ragged breathing. Edelgard in front, and Hubert’s presence lurking behind.</p><p>“What money?”</p><p>“You and Fraldarius should have enough money to live large in any manner you want. No new heists. And no Dimitri as a backer. Why, that last ancient amphora you stole from one of my casinos five years ago was alone worth enough to buy you any land you wanted.”</p><p>Edelgard wasn’t a fidgeter. She sat poker-straight and stared without flinching.</p><p>“So, imagine my confusion when I discovered you were in Derdriu, broke enough to steal a papyrus scroll from a visiting Almyran collection. And if you were that broke, there was no way you would be able to buy out my bounty on Fraldarius.”</p><p>“I know the story quite well, thank you, Edelgard.”</p><p>“Where did all your money go?”</p><p>Byleth gritted her teeth. “I have expensive taste.”</p><p>“Do you?” Edelgard’s eyes flicked doubtfully over Byleth’s getup. Even before it had been stained with blood, vomit, and sweat, the padded wool of the martial arts armor hadn’t been particularly pretty.</p><p>“Then here’s another story you might find familiar. Years ago, I had an old friend back in Garreg Mach. She was somewhat unconventional, always lived on the wrong side of the law, preferred the company of vagabonds and villains, but I admired her. She was careful, measured, and made of steel.</p><p>“I left that town. I needed to centralize landholdings. I was building a better world. But imagine how I missed my friend. Imagine the sadness I felt when I discovered that my friend and her father had been quietly sowing the seeds of discord into everything I was working so hard to centralize.</p><p>“Then something tragic happened to my friend. Something I dearly regretted for her. Her father died and—”</p><p>“—was murdered—” Byleth’s words thundered across Edelgard’s soft storytelling</p><p>“—and I was very upset for you. For a while, you disappeared, and when you returned to the scene, you had a new accomplice. He was from a Faerghan dynasty close to the Blaiddyds. Nonetheless, the two of you kept it simple. Your crimes were aesthetic, petty, even fun. I had nothing to fear from your alliance, so I allowed you to continue in peace, stealing art to your crooked hearts' content—”</p><p>“I’m flattered that you kept such close track of me. I’ll ask that you write all this into my eulogy once you inevitably have me killed.”</p><p>“Sooner than you might think,” Hubert’s words were oily behind her. They took their time soaking into her skin, and even once they did, some residue lingered on the surface.</p><p>“Except there were still problems with my dream of unification. A shadowy figure was funding revolutionaries throughout Enbarr. They bought back land, organized militias, and tore my plans to pieces. Their influence subverted my plans into the dystopian nightmare of a neon-coated roulette wheel. How I hated what was happening to my empire.</p><p>“This person, this shadowy presence—who spread lies of my illegitimate claim to Fodlan and dispersed their anarchist longing—went by the title of The Professor.</p><p>“The final straw was, of course, finding out that it was you, my friend. I went mad with it, realizing your connections to Blaiddyd in Faerghus weren’t so innocent after all, that you spent all your money to break up my empire. Wouldn’t your sham of a champagne-bubble lifestyle have been preferable?”</p><p>“I told you your plan sucked. You chose to go through with it anyway, violently.”</p><p>“You began the violence.”</p><p>“Tell me something, Edelgard. When my dad died, and you told me how sorry you were, were you ever planning on admitting that your crew did him in?”</p><p>“I had no control over that.”</p><p>“And therein lies the problem.”</p><p>Byleth was feeling heated. She raised her eyes to the ceiling, trying to find her composure. Yet something funny was happening when she glanced out the tiny square window: for a split second, she thought that she saw Felix’s face.</p><p>He was hanging upside down in the window, ponytail dropping and swinging around, and he was using a knife to chisel a pyramid of bird shit away from the window. She was pretty sure they were locking eyes, and it even seemed like he was mouthing something to her.</p><p>Another hallucination.</p><p>She snapped her face away.</p><p>“…you think I’m violent,” Edelgard was saying. “Maybe I have become that way. Maybe it has been your influence all along. Rest assured, we’ll take this opportunity to put you and your crew in the ground, and then maybe the violence will end.”</p><p>“My crew? Leave them out of it.”</p><p>“I would have if they had elected to stay out of it.”</p><p>“I came alone.” <em>With a little help from Claude</em>, she thought poisonously.</p><p>“Is that so?” Hubert's answer was a ghoulish smirk.</p><p> </p><p>— — —</p><p> </p><p>
  <strong>Interrogation Room 6</strong>
</p><p>Mercedes’s fingers fidgeted across the ripped sleeve of her gray sweater dress. A curved needle would patch it right up, but she had all of that back at the headquarters. Still, as her fingers toyed with the rip, she couldn’t help loosening it more, little by little widening it until she could get two of her thin fingers through her sleeve. She knew that if she kept going it would be a full rip. How much damage, she mused, could two fingers, even hers, so slender and precise, do?</p><p>The door of the interrogation room opened. Through it stepped a tall man. His long blond hair was pinned into a low ponytail with an Adrestian-style clasp. He always was rail-thin, no matter how many chocolates she sent him. And now he was looking ruffled from a long drive.</p><p>She looked up into blue eyes framed by sallow bags and that perpetual grimace. “I hoped it would be you.”</p><p> </p><p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>
  <span class="small">Mood Board—</span>
  <br/>
  <span class="small">Edelgard and Byleth agree to sing a karaoke duet of “The Man Who Sold the World.” Except, Edelgard is singing the David Bowie version and Byleth is singing the Kurt Cobain cover. Who wins?</span>
</p><p>Next up: "Clear and Precise Communication"</p>
        </blockquote><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Take care and thanks for reading!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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